Chapter 4020: Gloves Are Off (Part 1)

"Kid, don’t get too emotional." Vastor replied. "How long do you think my cover would hold if all the Eldritch hybrids of the Organization focused their efforts on Essagor? What would happen to us once the Guardians understand that I’m the Master?"

Nelia clenched her fists and jaw so hard that they popped, but she said nothing.

"Just wait for the signal from your siblings. Let a few of them strike first in the other regions of the Kingdom so that Essagor doesn’t stand out. At that point, you have my permission to go wild. If there’s someone left to kill, of course."

Vastor Warped himself outside his secret lab and on the high walls surrounding the city of Verlam.

"Is everything ready?" He asked the guard captain.

"Yes, My Lord." Unlike most men in his company, Captain Eilas was old enough to know what Vastor was capable of. "Everything has been prepared according to your instructions months ago."

Eilas looked at the short, plump middle-aged man in front of him with utter respect, yet his mouth curled in a savage grin. He almost pitied the Upyrs for their fate.

Almost.

’And what is this old timer going to do with a bunch of stones?’ The other soldiers, however, only saw Vastor as a rich, pampered mage who fattened up on tax money. ’If Verhen were our lord, he would be fighting on the front lines instead of hiding here with us recruits.’

"Good." The Master noticed the scorn in the young soldiers’ eyes and ignored it as he had done for his entire life. "Now, stand back and shut up. I need focus."

A tap of his Yggdrasill staff, Grimbark, activated one of the arrays of Verlam’s walls. The capital of Essagor was a large city, and the Upyrs had focused on the most populated areas, leaving the seemingly useless battlements alone.

A second tap of Grimbark etched runes of power on the giant stones piled up near each of the guard towers. The enchantment was too strong for its vessels, and the simple boulders wouldn’t last more than a few minutes before collapsing.

Yet Vastor only needed seconds.

A third tap of the staff connected Vastor to the observation points, allowing him to look through the surveillance enchantments imbued in every guard tower at the same time.

A fourth tap activated the small arrays surrounding the stone projectiles, amplifying Mogar’s gravity by a thousandfold and altering its direction.

At a flick of Vastor’s fingers, a hail of boulders the size of a stagecoach soared into the sky at the speed of a sniper bullet. They were so fast that the Upyrs didn’t see them coming.

The air runes carved into the rocks pushed them past the sound barrier, while the earth and fire enchantment made them explode on impact.

Each projectile hit like a fist weighing hundreds of kilos and detonated like a grenade. Fire, stone shrapnel, and lava bit deeply into the black hide of the Upyrs, bringing their killing frenzy to a halt.

A few had their heads burst open and died on the spot. The survivors were crippled, but far from dead. Yet.

"Push another stone in the Slingshot arrays!" Eilas barked in his amulet, and the soldiers across Verlam’s walls obeyed, their mouths twisted in a grin identical to their captain’s.

"My Lord, with all due respect, those boulders are fast, but now the enemy will expect them." A soldier with enough talent for magic to be a magico said. "What if those curs use one of those weird emerald spells to shoot your projectiles right back at us?

"Even worse, what if they dodge the next volley and Verlam suffers the might of your magic?"

Eilas was about to scold the soldier for insubordination, but Vastor’s raised hand stopped him.

"Excellent question, kid. I know answering with another question is rude, but do you really think that a bunch of giant rocks is all I have prepared to defend the capital of my region?" The Master pointed at the sky, and everyone raised their heads.

Only then did the soldiers notice that the fluffy white clouds above Verlam had merged into a dark, massive thundercloud.

"I didn’t become an Archduke just because of my social or political skills, kid." The Master cut the air horizontally, and bolts of true lightning descended from the sky, striking the Upyrs with surgical precision. "I built these walls to be a big magic circle, and I’m a mage.

"Also, those aren’t random rocks. They are magnetite. The opening salvo coated the Upyrs with enough metal to turn them into huge lightning rods.’"

Nature unleashed its fury upon the corrupted Divine Beasts, their colossal size made them stand above most buildings, drawing several bolts of lightning on them every second. Their flesh burned, and their blood boiled.

The relentless onslaught shattered the Upyrs’ Spirit Barriers and struck like a god’s hammer, bringing them to their knees. Only a handful of corrupted Divine Beasts was still alive a few seconds later, when the second volley of projectiles hit them and put the Upyrs out of their misery.

***

’You filthy bastards!’ Nelia watched the massacre in Verlam unfold from the sky, yet she found no solace in it. ’This is my land. That’s my people. This is my mother’s turf! How dare you mongrels invade the sanctity of our home?’

Most Griffons inherited Tyris’s instinct to nurture and protect the weak, and Nelia was no exception. The millennia she had spent as an Eldritch, denying her natural instinct, made it much more violent now that she no longer suffered from the eternal hunger that plagued Abominations.

She bolted toward the nearest city under attack with bolts of silver lightning arching across her body and Chaos Spells ready at her claws, forming a curtain of black light around her leonine fingers.

"The Council is on the move, and four of your siblings have already reached their targets." Vastor’s voice came out of her amulet as she flew towards another besieged city of Essagor. "Gloves are off."

Nelia shrieked in fury and released five Chaos Magic spells, Howling Void. Five Upyrs died on the spot, their heads and the upper part of their torsos devoured by spears of energy.

The Frost Griffon landed amid the remaining flabbergasted Upyrs with the grace of a butterfly. She raised no shockwave and hurt no civilian. Her fists, instead, struck like meteors, blowing the Upyrs apart like flesh balloons.

Rivers of blood flooded the streets of the city of Alasto before anyone could understand what had just happened. Nelia was already gone, and death had reverted the Upyrs into their original size and form.

The corrupted Divine Beasts turned into Emperor Beasts’ corpses and Fae’s Roots. The citizens of Alasto stepped over the bloody flowers, brambles, and leaves, wondering about who the thundering shadow was and how it could have dragged so many monsters away so fast.

***

Distar Marquisate, city of Derios.

Orpal had sent over twenty Upyrs to deal with Brinja, but they had found her ready.

She knew that one day the Dead King would return for her, and even though her preparations couldn’t spare her city from the rampaging Divine Beasts, they foiled the Upyrs’ best weapon.

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