Chapter 198 - Come Tumbling Down

Enthralling Touch slithered through the sporadic lines of Graymin as they rushed toward the vulnerable remains of Morothin. Jiran didn’t kill those he drained, instead leaving them for the Forkara to boost their EXP. Without mana, the weaker beasts were slow, lacked power, and their regenerative capabilities reduced to that of a child. With empty manapools, Tier six Rooks were incapable of shaping and launching the rocks that were their deadliest weapons. Worse still, they were large enough to be easily spotted and ganged up on by Bladewinds.

The stolen strength of the horde flowed into a winding river that Jiran directed into his allies. He made sure to top off Lostrifar’s formation blocks which were thankfully intact before making a quick pit stop at the hovel he and Mayalyn had used for the last day. There, he grabbed a heavy metal box with his aura before turning everything else inside the small space into sand. He collapsed it on the way out, and then slowly made his way north. Once far enough away from his own people, he began releasing a steady stream of Gravity Bombs, decimating the beasts and turning their mad dash toward the broken city into nothing more than a clean-up operation for his allies.

With the initial densoon storm dissipated, the skies were clearing up enough for him to observe the Forkara spread out through the mountains. Their prowess on the front lines was nothing compared to what they could do in terrain that so perfectly suited their natures. They dove from cliffs at ridiculous speeds for their tiers, unleashing sweeping ranged strikes that left their far slower prey in pieces. Maneuvering with impressive natural talent, they used crags and sharp ridges to block sight and fall back before diving all over again. The Graymin who were capable of flight fared far less well than those on land; they were circled and torn apart without ever having a chance to reach their opponents.

Jiran didn’t stick around long enough to watch the bird-people playing with their meals. He flew higher and higher until the mountains looked no larger than small bumps on the ground. It only took a few minutes for a gap in the shifting clouds to reveal the missing mountain. He created an obfuscating layer of light and wrapped it around himself. He then held the metal box in his arms and tucked his aura in tight before descending on what was now a flat section of land roughly four kilometers across.

Thanks to Mana Omnis, he was able to easily pinpoint a dozen groups of Rooks scouting on the nearby peaks. They were hidden well beneath the snow and the visible parts of their bodies had even taken on a white hue.

That explains why we didn’t get any reports about what they were doing.

Jiran ignored the camouflaged beasts to follow the numerous tier six beacons already surrounding another nearby mountain. It would be impossible to accurately count them with how much they squirmed about, but he estimated there were at least five hundred thousand. They worked far too quickly for comfort, ripping and tearing huge chunks of rock, stone, and ore with every swing of their mana-infused arms. The excess materials were compacted and thrown backward, creating a rumbling racket and a massive ring of dust that circled the entire mountain. They burrowed into its basen, cutting out a three-meter-tall layer as though they were attempting to cut down a massive tree. Nearly fifty thousand of their numbers shambled behind the diggers, placing their hands on the ceiling periodically, infusing enough elemental energy into their gargantuan projectile to stabilize it.

I’ll need to kill as many of them as possible with my opening attack. It would be impossible to track down even half of them if they scattered afterward. Why even use this strategy, if they had simply brought this many tier sixes to the front lines, they might have overwhelmed us already…

I can either wait for them to finish cutting out that layer of the mountain and then drop it on their heads, or use the new formation weapons to wipe them all out instantly. That's silly: why choose? I'll do both. If one fails, I'll have a backup.

Jiran flipped the metal box upside down and forty cubes fell out, each the size of his palm. He held one in his hand and surrounded it with a mixture of mana and aura just like he’d practiced. With a flicker of intent, the cube shrunk and vanished into a nearby synapse. A moment later, Mana Omnis allowed him to see the ball of mana that zipped backward along the same synapse, informing him that the cube had successfully completed its teleportation and was now buried a meter beneath the ground.

He breathed a sigh of relief. This had been his first attempt at teleporting an active and charged weapon formation. The previous attempts had all been on the scouting formations he had used to locate Markhiss’ shadow ghosts. He still had no intention of attempting to teleport himself, but a small cube capable of killing him in an instant if something went wrong: No problem. Jiran smiled, recalling the long series of tests he had performed with Mayalyn before she begrudgingly gave him ‘permission’ to teleport them.

Jiran made a slow ring around the mountain, maintaining his invisibility while teleporting cubes into the ground every two kilometers. The projected blast radius of the new devices was nearly five kilometers, while the original ones he made before Mayalyn’s ingenious idea were only three. He hadn’t tested them yet to be sure, so he stuck with a distance that would almost certainly overlap, causing a chain reaction if he triggered even one of them.

Once done, he found a position on the ground and waited. It took the rooks nearly six hours to burrow out the entire layer of the mountain. Inside, the beasts shuffled energetically like a colony of bugs. When the mountain began to shake, Jiran made his move. He dropped the layer of obfuscating elemental light to focus all his minds on creating as many chakrams as possible. He chose to use fire, as the heat would melt the rock above and below the missing layer of mountain, further destabilizing the Graymin’s ability to hold the gargantuan structure above their heads.

Multiple beams of crimson energy raked across the backs of the outermost monsters. This was his first time firing into so many tier six beasts at once and he quickly realized their tough bodies were absorbing the energy far faster than anticipated. Normally, his chakrams could decimate everything within a line two kilometers long, but with only higher-tier beasts as targets, he was barely managing five hundred meters. If he didn't increase the speed he was killing them, there was a good chance they would manage to launch the mountain before he made a dent in their numbers.

The monsters were far from idle after his opening salvo. Three dozen boulders raced toward his position from the nearby peaks. Unlike his time dealing with the rooks in Mortan, he could now easily perceive their attacks. Mana and aura forced his body through a complex series of evasive maneuvers even as Enthralling Touch restored his mana. Before the last boulder blasted into the ground with a thunderous crash, Elemental Castigation had charged another five plasma chakrams.

This time, Jiran joined his lasers into a single attack that pierced deep into the ranks of beasts. Through that gap, his sixth and final beam carried a gravity bomb that detonated directly in the center of the mountain. The bomb contained five percent of his mana which wasn’t nearly enough to absorb and store so much rock. It only expanded to around three hundred meters before all of that compressed matter was expelled. Due to the blast being contained inside the thin layer dug out of the mountain, its explosive force was amplified, devastating a large portion of the remaining tier sixes.

The mountain rumbled and shook before dropping on top of the survivors, trapping them under far too much weight to easily escape. A gargantuan clap sounded, releasing an expanding wave of dust that Jiran used to hide himself from the sniping rooks. After reactivating his obfuscations once more, he used Mana Omnis to track the trapped beasts while considering how to deal with them. At this point, their numbers had been reduced to around a hundred thousand, which was still more than enough to swamp his allies' defenses on the front line.

Suddenly, the Framework directly around Jiran went haywire, perfectly matching the intensity of Foresight that rang a warning in his neck. That sense he had begun to understand in The Land of the Lost was screaming holy hell, as though enemies were approaching from every direction. Not seeing anything, but trusting his senses, Jiran slunk away from the scene of slaughter in a crouch while pulling his mana and aura in tight to create the least disturbance in his surroundings.

My obfuscation isn't perfect. It only works well when I move slowly. With all the rooks on the peaks, if I try to fly out of here in a hurry, they’ll definitely spot me and their attacks would be much more accurate if I was flying in a straight line. I should avoid trying to flee too quickly. But this feeling… something bad is definitely coming. Did the rankers miss a higher tier on their way north?

Before Jiran could make up his mind on the best course of action, a tier seven Graymin arrived in a series of rapid Teleportations. He recognized the quick and sleek Slayer variant from Mortan, the ones he’d killed there had been annoying to pin down due to their reduced Teleportation cooldown. Jiran couldn’t help but feel a pang of longing to rip the beast to shreds and absorb the challenger density waiting tantalizingly just below its skin. Luckily, the compulsion was weak and easily discarded because, within five seconds, there were nearly a hundred more tier sevens zipping through the air. They swarmed his previous position, which now felt far too close for comfort, and went to work tearing apart the ground.

When nearly five hundred more tier sevens came bounding into the valley from every direction, Jiran’s blood ran cold and he was suddenly unable to breathe as sweat soaked the inner layer of his armor. It wasn’t the rapid appearance of so many tier sevens that terrified him, for he was confident he was faster than them, it was the fact that every single one of them was completely devoid of mana.

The Rooks and the mountain were a trap! There’s no way it's a coincidence they have no mana and arrived so quickly. Were they targeti—

Jiran’s train of thought was shredded as several clues simultaneously aligned within his minds: The words of the Graymin, demanding to bring, ‘Him,’ his hypothesis that the beasts had the ability to steal the skills of the creatures they devoured with the filth, the appearance of the King so quickly after his exploits in Mortan, the way the pawns all screamed in unison when he first displayed Enthralling Touch, and now, this ambush, designed specifically to catch someone capable of draining mana. The beasts had even waited until the rankers were drawn north to spring their trap.

Everything that’s happened, this entire war, it was all orchestrated to catch, kill, and consume me.

As if under the commands of a general, every tier seven with even an ounce of mana remaining inside their manapools leaped high into the air. They hovered in a loose circle, surrounding a figure that emerged from the clouds. This newest beast wore an eerily familiar smile. Jiran would never forget those eyes that glistened with wicked intelligence. Even before Identify confirmed its health was nearly fifty percent greater than a normal slayer, Jiran knew it was the very beast that had nearly killed Reihnhardt and Ravenna before the Remalon had arrived.

It escaped him once, wisely fleeing before ever exchanging blows with him and now it was back to settle the score.

With a pointed finger, it directed the airborne tier sevens who began systematically blasting the ground in a web-like search pattern. Jiran crept further away, but the violet blasts of destructive energy drew closer far faster than he was moving. At this rate, it was only a matter of time before they found him.

Above the ruins of Morothin

Nine figures in dark, crimson robes Teleported into the stratosphere high above a raging battle. Deep hoods hid their features but did not prevent them from gazing down at the mixed forces of humans and abominations that clashed against the Graymin, holding the beasts back with unsettling ease.

“The city has indeed fallen. It would appear they have thrown a mountain.” One of the hooded figures remarked while dipping his head in deference to their leader who stood disinterestedly at the northern edge of their formation.

Another commented, her tone revealing her curiosity, “Yet they have not been overwhelmed. The abominations are more powerful than our estimations.”

“They must be cleansed!” Yet another raised his hand, palm pointed toward the fighting far below.

Their leader spoke for the first time, his voice a whip that caused them all to flinch, “Don't you dare, Twelve. Unless you wish to revisit the chamber so soon. The same goes for the rest of you. Until our objectives are complete, any wasted mana will be considered dereliction of faith.”

Twelve shuddered, his hand dropping to his side in a flash. He stood unmoving after that with his head lowered, not making a sound.

The leader continued, his voice now calm yet commanding, “Three, have you located Jiran of Feylon?”

“No, Sir. He is not here. Is it possible he fled?”

“Based on his previous exploits, it is more likely that he chose to assist the princess in countering the Grays new strategy. Three, find and secure him. He must not be allowed to expire before we have our answers from him. The rest of you will come with me to ensure the emperors’ demise. Let the Graymin clean up the abominations for us.”

“What of the new portals?” Three questioned.

“Leave them for now, if the worst comes to pass, they will be our only path out of the empire.”

“If they are so valuable, should we not secure them?” The curious woman asked.

The leader’s voice turned harsh, causing the gathered Templari to instinctively tremble, “We have no way of knowing if sealing them in a barrier would destabilize them. Just one more reason why securing Jiran is such a high priority. He must not be allowed to die.”

He directed the last to Three who nodded repeatedly, “I understand, One. I will fulfill my duty, or embrace the Voice.”