Goreville reached the top of the hill and planted his sword into the mana locus.

A statue of his god, many times his own size, immediately arose from the earth in all of its primeval splendor. A pulse of energy blanketed the group of outriders with their lord's blessing.

"It is done, Lord Wepwawet!" Goreville declared with pride.

"Thank you, Goreville," his god responded in his mind. He sounded more solemn than usual. "This will help."

Was that tension Goreville detected in his god's voice? He turned his head to look at the great beast Lord Wepwawet and the magmorian goddess fought in the sky with words of power. Goreville had no doubt his deity would pull through in the end, the same way he defeated the vile Beelzebub in Promesse, but the clash had to be rather intense to warrant that kind of reaction…

Viviane suddenly uttered a warning. "Oh my Grand-Loup!" their archer shouted as she pointed at the horizon, her face livid. "Look! To the southeast!"

Goreville and his fellow scouts gathered at the edge of the hill to better observe the landscape. His enhanced sense of sight noticed movement in the distance and quickly spotted an eight-headed, silvery serpent in the distance. Goreville didn't know what to make of it until he noticed a tiny winged lizard carrying a man on its back flying above it… and then realized it was Jarlack the giant and his wyvern mount.

Only now did the sheer size of the snake creature hit him.

"What the hell is that?" Rapoleon asked, the usually unflappable wererat's voice wavering.

"Do you see the size of that snake?!" Mistouffe shouted from atop her weremammoth mount. "Grudu looks like a kitten in comparison!"

"Grudu…" Grudu muttered under his breath. He didn't sound too confident about his chances of taking it head-on either, and Goreville couldn't blame him. Jarlack harassed it by diving on it from above, striking at it with his axe, and then flying away when the creature snapped back at him with its many heads.

The beast seemed to lose patience at his constant interference and swiftly retaliated by firing streams of purple smoke at Jarlack. The giant and his wyvern quickly flew far away into the sky and out of range, which allowed the serpent to continue its slow progress across the landscape.

"It's aiming straight for Narc!" Viviane warned the rest of the troop. "We need to intercept it!"

"It's suicide!" Rapoleon protested. "Look at our team! We aren't outfitted for this!"

Goreville had to agree with the wererat. Their troop was a small scout warband of wereling coursers and human outriders on horseback, along with Mistouffe and Grudu. Their task force had been assembled to move fast and quickly infiltrate hostile territory, not to fight a giant monster. They did carry a wealth of alchemical firebombs—especially Mistouffe, who could fit a surprising amount of resources in her bag–to destroy fortifications, but nothing that could harm that creature. It looked big enough to swallow any of them in a single bite!

Lord Wepwawet sensed their doubts and issued new orders. "Victoire and I will take care of Narc's defense, but we face another issue. The enemy has summoned a dangerous device capable of spawning new monsters south of your location."

"South?" Rapoleon glanced at the awful landscape of rusty iron and strange substances covering what used to be Narc's plains. "I can smell the poison reeking from the land all the way from here. Even we wererats would struggle to thrive in such an environment."

"I think I could survive the trip on my own, but not with a large group," Viviane said.

"I heal quickly," Goreville added. "I can survive."

"I have a lot of antidotes and healing potions in my bag for Grudu and me!" Mistouffe said with a nod. "We can pull our weight."

"Antidotes?" Goreville blinked in surprise. "Why bring antidotes to a recon mission?"

"Because a merchant is always prepared!"

Goreville admired her foresight, though perhaps not her lack of caution. "The five of us Champions will move quicker," the werewolf informed the rest of their troop. "The rest of you will reinforce the main army!"

"You will be in enemy territory," Lord Wepwawet warned them before marking a short pause. "I won't lie, this will be an exceedingly dangerous assignment."

Goreville could see the hidden message between the lines: that their god could not guarantee their survival, much like he couldn't in the depths of that cursed Sacred Source in Promesse. He exchanged a glance with his fellow Champions and saw only determination.

None of them hesitated.

Pele's turn didn't start out too great.

"Four mana?!" Pele cursed as her two mana surges hardly fueled her. "Bah! I pay my Doctrine's cost and cast a Rank 1 Prophecy!"

That's not good, Wepwawet thought as he reviewed the board state. Not good at all.

Goreville claiming a third Altar had bolstered Wepwawet's mana reserves and Jarlack had managed to slow down the Hydraslime a little by distracting it, but not by much.

"Boss-in-the-Sky!" Jarlack called out to him through telepathy. The giant's axe cleaved through a slimy head that immediately put itself back in a second's time. "I don't want to sell myself short, but my attacks do jack-shit!"

On top of being colossal and packing a powerful breath weapon, the Hydraslime appeared to share Slimon's oozelike immunity to physical damage. Jarlack would likely have been able to hurt it had Pyramid Warfare been in play, but the Titan Incursion deactivated all active Doctrines and Wepwawet had yet to draw that Miracle.

Worse, Whiro's third turn was fast approaching, and with it, the resolution of his Kaiju Fusion Premonition Ritual. The situation on the ground would significantly worsen then.

Wepwawet ordered Jarlack to keep delaying the Hydraslime to the best of his ability. The creature was less than three miles away from making contact with Narc's first layer of defensive fortifications. The more time Jarlack gave them, the more cards and mana Wepwawet would have to assist his Champions in repelling it.

"This is Whiro's third turn," the Titan said upon drawing. His mana counter rose to nine. "Kaiju Fusion Premonition activates!"

Mana once again gathered at the edge of Whiro's Influence. Much to Wepwawet and Pele's horror, a second Hydraslime had appeared on the battlefield with a vicious roar. The new one immediately moved eastward towards Citadel Sapphire. Fire Sultan Onyx and the bulk of the magmorian army were only a few miles away from it and would likely make contact with that monster soon.

"Now Whiro casts the Rank 8 Ritual Earthquake–"

"No, you don't!" Pele boasted upon flipping her card. "My Mana Burn Prophecy activates! You lose three mana points, and now you don't have enough mana to cast your earthquake!"

A flame swallowed Whiro's mana counter, diminishing it from nine to six. The Titan's grunt of annoyance brought a smile to the young gods' faces. Wepwawet couldn't believe Pele was actually pulling her weight in this fight.

Unfortunately, their enemy quickly recovered by playing another Miracle. "Whiro casts the Rank 4 Elemental Shield Doctrine, which grants Whiro's creatures immunity to one elemental damage type of Whiro's choice. Whiro can change the elemental type at the start of his turn, and he chooses Fire for this one."

Pele audibly cursed when a crimson aura of light glowed around the two Hydraslimes.

Wepwawet, however, immediately caught on to an ominous detail. "Something's wrong."

"Damn right it is!" Pele complained. "Does he truly think it'll take a mere Doctrine to protect him from my element?! My deck will punch through that shield in no time–"

"No, no, you don't get it!" Wepwawet pointed at Whiro's Idol. "None of our soldiers are within reach of his Influence, yet he still prioritized casting his Earthquake Miracle over shielding his troops!"

Whiro remained coldly silent and wasn't foolish enough to give away his strategy, so Wepwawet quickly observed his units in play. His gaze lingered on the Ecocide Cauldron he had played a few turns prior. The machine had already vomited up a small army of slime monsters.

Wepwawet's eyes widened in horror as he guessed Whiro's plan.

"Stop me if I'm wrong," Wepwawet muttered under his breath, "But Whiro's Providence lets him gain mana anytime something dies within his Influence, right?"

"Yes, it does," Pele replied.

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"Does that include his own troops?"

Pele froze in place, then glanced at the cauldron and put two and two together. The machine wasn't a source of reinforcements, but a mana piggy bank!

"Shit!" Pele cursed.

"It's your move," Whiro replied coldly as his turn came to an end.

Wepwawet drew Pot of Gluttony and, most importantly, earned thirteen points worth of mana from his three mana surges, bringing his total to twenty. He was tempted to immediately cast his new Miracle and earn himself a large card advantage, but the hefty eleven mana price seemed too high to pay for now.

Unfortunately, Jarlack's luck had run out, too. One of the Hydraslime's corrosive breaths had grazed his wyvern's wing and forced the giant into landing away from the creature.

"This is as far as I go, Boss," Jarlack warned.

"You did well," Wepwawet replied before turning his attention to Victoire and Wintresse. "Is the artillery ready?"

"Ready and waiting," Victoire confirmed.

Perfect. Wepwawet asked the firebombers to stay in reserve—since the Elemental Shield would protect the Hydraslime from them—and Lord Raymond's army to wait for now. The Hydraslime had reached the edge of his Influence and wouldn't live long enough to regret it.

"I cast Ice Barrier!" Wepwawet said, targeting the Hydraslime. "Then I trigger my Ruin Excavation Prophecy, which lets me recover my Miracle and cast it again!"

The titanic hydra lurched forward, trampling barricades and ditches in its path.

Victoire had heard of hydra creatures, but never seen one in the flesh, let alone one so large. Insupportable would look like a husky hound challenging a great wolf in comparison, and Bernard was still busy struggling to convince that wyrm to defend Narc rather than try to take Princess Topaz back to his hoard anyway.

None could even approach it. Cynisca, Lord Raymond, and the rest of the army had split into two groups encircling the creature from left and right, but had to remain at a distance to avoid the beast's corrosive breath. The soldiers unlucky enough to approach it too closely had had their flesh melted off their bones in return.

"What a dreadful creature…" Princess Topaz muttered under her breath.

"Stay behind me, Princess," Jasper said, his body shielding his charge.

"The beast is within range!" Wintresse informed her. Her wandcasting unit stood on the highest outer walls, waiting for a signal to fire while Renarde supported them with a song.

"Wait!" Victoire replied. The hydra crushed the barricades and reached the second layer of ice barrier and watchtower fortifications. "Just a tiny bit more…"

The hydra rammed the ice barrier with a roar, cracking it on impact yet thankfully failing to shatter it in one blow. The impact caused the ground to shake and sent debris flying in all directions. Victoire kept her cool even as her squire trembled at her side.

Ice surged from the ground out of nowhere.

The hydra shrieked in surprise as a cocoon of frost magically enclosed it from all sides. The monster soon turned into a statue of ice, yet Victoire's relief hardly lasted a few seconds until she noticed the cracks. The beast was alive within its prison and eager to break out.

"It's immobilized!" Victoire shouted. "Fire at will!"

"First volley!" Wintresse ordered, her soldiers triggering their blackstone wands all at once.

A volley of wind blasts surged from the walls in a thunderous explosion. Ripples spread across the air, the backlash nearly throwing Filou off the walls and forcing Jasper to grab Princess Topaz. Victoire herself remained steadfast as the volley hit the hydra's frozen heads and pulverized them.

No sooner did the wandcasters unleash the first blast that Wintresse had them kneel to give the second group a direct line of fire. She repeated the process many times, bombarding the hydra until shattered ice and slime droplets were all that remained of the creature. Only then did Wintresse call off the attack.

"Complete success!" Wintresse boasted.

Victoire assessed the battlefield to confirm it… and quickly cursed under her breath.

The hydra's parts each continued to move as independent, silvery slimes; some smaller than cats, others big enough to swallow a man whole. They immediately crawled towards the same point all at once.

"It's pulling itself back together!" Victoire raised her spear and aimed at the slimes. "Don't let them gather!"

Since frost had worked well enough to paralyze the hydra, Victoire imbued her Dragontooth Spear with its power and threw it from the walls. Her weapon hit a slime below and froze it solid in an instant. She recalled her weapon to her side, then threw it again and again, using the vantage point provided by the elevation of the walls to better pinpoint the slimes.

Cynisca's cavalry and Lord Raymond's infantry finally moved into melee by launching a pincer attack, with the former running over the monsters with her chariots and the latter spearing and slashing them. Neither achieved much. The pieces recomposed themselves in an instant and gathered in a quivering mass at the battlefield's center.

"Do we fire again?" Wintresse asked, showing some unease and little care for the soldiers on the ground that might be caught in the blast.

"No, wait for it to reform!" Victoire ordered. Their wands' limited charges were too precious to be wasted, and the blasts had only split the hydra, not destroyed it. She had another idea in mind. "Filou, get Lourson and Alpine to deploy the golems! And order Slimon to bring his Dry weapon!"

His invention might prove useful after all.

Wepwawet clenched his jaw. Of course a hydra would regenerate!

He had hoped his freeze-and-bombard tactic would kill the creature, but it only delayed its attack on Narc. Worse, the combo had cost him fourteen mana, leaving him with a meager six. Wepwawet ordered his troops to focus their attacks on the slimes making-up the hydra in order to slow down its regeneration, then used the only useful Miracle he had left.

"I cast Oath of Winter, spending six mana to infuse three Champions with the power of Frost," Wepwawet said as he concluded his turn, empowering Lord Raymond, Cynisca, and Kale; the three of them were the closest to the slimes and would need the blessing to even damage them.

That was all he could do for now. Goreville's crew was still a long way from making their way to the Ecocide Cauldron and wouldn't reach it in time before Whiro took his turn.

"I draw!" Pele said as she dramatically played another card. Unlike Wepwawet, the seriousness of their situation hadn't hit her yet; doubly so when her mana surges gave her plenty of gas to spend. "I cast my Rank 9 Eternal Flame Ritual on my Fire Sultan Onyx!"

Wepwawet glanced at her side of the board. The magmorian army had finally made contact with the second Hydraslime beyond the front of Whiro's garbage-filled domain. Princess Bloodstone and her dragon rained fire upon the monster—to no avail because of the Elemental Shield—while a horde of soldiers and wyrms bombarded the creature's heads with spells and catapults. It did little more than annoy the Hydraslime, but it did slow it down.

Only Fire Sultan Onyx dared to engage the Hydraslime in close combat, and Pele's blessing only increased his fervor. His body more than doubled in size and glowed so bright his soldiers had to cover their eyes with their hands to look at him. His whip and sword of flames began to cut through the Elemental Shield, incinerating slime into mere steam each time they made contact.

"Impressed yet?!" Pele boasted. "My Champion burns bright like a sun, so much his flames bypass all forms of magical resistance and immunity to Fire while protecting him from all forms of Ailments! Your Hydraslime will turn to steam in an instant!"

Whiro didn't even react. He didn't even pay much attention to the board. He simply stared at Pele's time counter, patiently waiting for it to reach zero.

Wepwawet had a terrible feeling.

"Whiro draws," Whiro said the moment Pele's turn ended. His tone betrayed a hint of eagerness once his mana rose to a twelve, then eleven upon paying his Doctrine's cost. "Whiro shifts Elemental Shield's damage protection to Water, then casts the Rank 9 Animism Tsunami."

This took Wepwawet aback. He had expected Whiro to destroy his own slimes in order to refuel his mana pool, but then why would he make them immune to his own attack? It didn't make any sense, unless… unless…

Wepwawet glanced down at the board in horror.

His flames burned through evil.

It had been many centuries since the Fire Sultan had left his abode for war—not since the Winter Age that saw his birth—and he relished the feeling. He felt his soldiers watching his struggle from atop a hill, supporting him with arrows and catapult fire, acclaiming his bravery with shouts and drums. He was drunk on the glory and thirsty for victory!

The Eternal Flame's power coursed through his magma veins, fueling him, strengthening him. His Grand Vizier continued to cast buffing spells from a safe distance to hasten his sovereign's speed and the length of his sword. He had become the very incarnation of blazing war, unrelenting and unstoppable. Even the vile hydra's poisonous breath glided over his magma skin. The creature's screeches of pain as his blazing blade cut through its neck and slimy flesh were music to his ears.

A burning death was all that awaited those who defied Lavaland!

"Father, beware!" his brave daughter shouted from atop her dragon mount high above. The Fire Sultan could hardly hear her over the sound of his sword cleaving through flesh. "The sky!"

The Fire Sultan looked up in time to see a sea instead of a sky.

The sight was so strange, so bizarre, that the magmorian leader paused for a few seconds. A colossal orb of liquid floated high above the hydra, so large he couldn't see its outer limits.

What is tha–

The orb crashed upon the hydra and unleashed a cataclysmic wave of water on impact.

Tons upon tons of water bludgeoned the Fire Sultan. Most immediately turned to steam at the contact of his blazing fire, but such quantities flowed at him that he was soon pushed back by the unrelenting current. The shouts and applause of his troops turned into screams, but soon those too were drowned.

The flood swallowed the hills and his army both.

The tidal wave washed away a good chunk of the magmorian army and their siege weapons, drowning hundreds.

Pele stared in horror at the attack. This had been her first B&C battle, and Wepwawet guessed she had never suffered such losses in the past.

"You… fired at your own creature…" Pele gulped, her mind still struggling to process the gravity of the situation. "You… you killed them…"

Wepwawet's eyes snapped at Whiro's mana counter. True to his Providence, it climbed up with each death caused by his Miracle until it hit the maximum of ninety-nine.

"Whiro's Anthropocene Age activates," Whiro said as he emptied his entire hand save one card. A malevolent smirk stretched on his monstrous face. "Now Whiro discards three cards to cast Tsunami three more times!"

General Peridot watched the doom of his civilization in real time.

Fire Sultan Onyx had left him in charge of Citadel Sapphire, the Eternal Flame's Idol, and their wereling 'guests' while he went to campaign. General Peridot had watched His Majesty's army fight a massive monster across the horizon, miles away from the fortress. When he saw water raining down from the sky—the same way Jasper described rain clouds appearing out of nowhere during the Narc raid—and striking his army, he knew all his fears and doubts had come to pass.

Then reality exceeded his expectations.

Three more pulses of water rained down from the sky in quick succession. The first of these attacks had brought enough water to create a small lake; the next two brought so much liquid that they joined together in a colossal wave that reached hundreds of feet in the sky. It swept hills away, swallowed catapults, drowned wyrms alike, and reached so high that it caught Princess Bloodstone and her flying dragon in its watery embrace. A column of steam alone—which Peridot assumed was His Majesty—held back against the tide for a time, but it too was eventually swallowed.

The wave didn't stop either. Though distance caused it to slowly sink in height, it remained large and strong enough to sweep across the landscape straight at Citadel Sapphire.

"Lord Wepwawet have mercy…" Ambassador Sagesse muttered at General Peridot's side, her wings covering her beak in horror. "Oh my god…"

"It's coming right at us!" Lord Rickart warned.

General Peridot's soldier instincts immediately took over. "Everyone take cover!" he ordered his troops. "Prepare for impact!"

The wave hit the citadel at full velocity, extinguishing its lava moat and smashing its walls.

A miniature sea now covered the southeast of the board.

Wepwawet glanced at the devastation, then at Pele. His horrified teammate couldn't react, couldn't say a word. All she did was stare at a series of System notifications.

Onyx, Fire Sultan, extinguished.

Malachite, Loyal Grand Vizier, shattered.

Bloodstone, Fire Princess of War, extinguished.

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