286 (II)

  Instruction [I]

  Everything around her was burning to some degree, mainly because the kid had accelerated through this place without any regard to holding his air friction back with his Legendary Skill.

  As such, the ground was glass, and where it wasn't glass, the periphery was burning, boiling. Fat was popping, layers of fat that had been molded across the land in acts of transgressive Biomancy. Here, the soil itself was intruded by vampiric blood. Flesh was the way of things. Flesh ruled. Flesh existed over all other objects, claiming dominion. Unfortunately, flesh was also quite combustible. And flesh smelled really, really bad when someone tore it apart. When someone made it rot and decay. When someone split open the waste bubbling beneath the surface and let it spill out like sewer sludge gliding over the streets.

  A scoff escaped Jessica as she saw the wall of destruction rise in the distance. A tower was flung through the air, perhaps a hundred meters long originally. It had been ripped off at its base and was spewing blood, painting an arcing trail from where it was flung.

  Like letting a hungry hound loose in a fox’s den. "Yep, he's just letting loose and breaking shit. But you can't just keep smashing away, kid. You're going to need to apply a little bit of… surgery. Alright, Rusty. You ready to do this?"

  "I've already charted a path," he replied. "What remains is your hand to guide me."

  "Alrighty, then, let's get to cutting!"

  Jessica sliced through empty air, but butchered and bled vampiric flesh instead. Splashes of static opened up before her, and each of her strokes was cast across spatial reality, gliding across the fabric of the world. Her scythes, stabs, and hewing blows were painted upon the air before her, cast like spells from a wand, and they sneaked across distance as a dart would plunge through a placid pond.

  Elsewhere, a vampire was split down the middle as her Lineage Core burst apart. A few kilometers further, a blade passed through the skull of the vampire the Deathless was about to rip apart. Not far away from there, a mage, about to cast a blood-boiling spell on said Deathless, was beheaded from behind and then crushed along the middle. Hidden by an obfuscating spell, a group of fleeing vampires were bifurcated just as pluming mists of dense blood erupted around them. The unseen were cut down just as easily as those who remained visible. No spells spared them. No wards were enough to dissuade Jessica's cuts.

  Vampires with Master-Tier Magical Resistance or above were crushed directly. Jessica opened wounds in the surface of reality and thrust her fist across, increasing her size in sudden blinks. She struck them as a giant would deliver a blow upon an insect, and they splattered beneath her, unprepared for the sudden assault. And through it all, the Deathless remained ignorant of her attack, all too focused on his target.

  Jessica's bloodletting lasted forty seconds. In those forty seconds, she killed thousands before surviving groups of vampires started thickening their dimensional wards and teleporting away. At the same time came beams of crimson brilliance cleaving down from the sky, striking Jessica's surroundings in a responsive artillery bombardment of Heroic-Tier Biomantic devastation. Most of the mana bounced off her armor, deflected like rain peeling off the edge of a sloped roof. But as the accuracy of the attack increased, the blows began to rattle her—made her clench her teeth.

  And where the mana missed, it settled into the soil beside her before massive, fungus-like creatures erupted from the ground, flashing at her with their branching limbs, trying to drain her blood, trying to rip her limb from limb.

  She cut them down too with ease, but more and more of these blood horrors were erupting from the soil, even the seeds and vegetation converted to nightmarish biomass to dissuade any invaders from lingering too long in First Blood territory. It was as if the very land itself was called upon to rebel against her. As if anything infused with biomass turned into an enemy driven against the adversary.

  Jessica tore through them like a storm of blades crossing over a field of wheat, but she knew this was only a delaying action. More importantly, she felt something new slam against her armor. The alloy that protected her from mana rang like a gong, and she realized there was a proper power in play now. An adversary that possessed High Heroic-Tier magic and struck invisibly, with far greater accuracy than the bombardment.

  "Rusty," Jessica said as she lashed out with a spinning kick. The world around her came ablaze as jet streams of fire erupted from the wheels she skated on. The biomass combusted around her. The creatures risen to do the vampire's biddings returned to melted sludge, and then ash, and then little more than smoke. "I think we actually got someone worth killing. You got a feel for where they're at?"

  Before her awakened blade could answer, an erupting pillar of crimson pierced the sky and covered the bioluminescent cavern ceilings many kilometers above and to her right. Said pillar immediately sprouted tentacles of blood and lashed at a small shape hovering in the air before it. Blasts of red and white flowed there, and Jessica suddenly found herself forgetting something, unsure what the monster was fighting. A moment later, the colossal beast cracked along the middle, and someone returned in a burst of vitality.

  Shiv.

  She had forgotten him. The bastard had used that strange mind-altering skill of his. She didn't fully understand how that worked, but it was a nasty little trick. Also a good one, though.

  The kid’s mana hydra expanded out from around him, spreading along twelve different paths. The necks coiled around whatever the hells the vampires had thrown against him, and Biomancy field clashed against Biomancy field. Eruptions of crimson filled the air, enveloping everything, shrouding Shiv and the monster from Jessica's view. In a moment, she strode across space, crossing distances of kilometers to arrive just a few hundred meters above Shiv and whatever he was fighting. The air rumbled with violence; thunderous impacts sounded over and over again.

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  She saw the pillar-shaped, colossal monster swing a fist the size of a small mountain down on him. His Shapeless Tides slammed against the attack, driving it back with every blow. Though its tentacles were many, he was shrouded by his own Biomancy, and none of those lashing limbs could get close where his hydra encased him. He was effectively trapped in a cocoon, protected by his own magic. Spared of outside influence, and free to brutalize the other monster as much as he wanted. And brutalize the monster he did. It was like watching an insect slam a full-grown man against the ground over and over again. Parrying another blow aside, he grasped the monster and performed earth-shaking pile-driver after pile-driver until its midsection snapped apart entirely, ribs ripping through dense, leathery flesh.

  The beast roared, and its cry went from something primal and guttural, capable of shaking kilometers of the Umbra, to a pitched scream of a woman.

  The colossal monster's body vanished in a splash of Biomancy. Crimson light was drawn inward to a single point, and a vampiress plunged from the air, her own spine sticking out from her back, her own body mangled beyond measure. Her scream was abruptly cut off when Shiv disintegrated her and her Lineage Core with an accelerated dropkick.

  Jessica barked a laugh. "Cold-blooded."

  "Indeed," Rusty agreed. "But we've stayed too long. The vampire he just killed was a High Hero. A sacrifice. She was never meant to prevail against him. She was just meant to keep him pinned in place long enough for the counterattack."

  "Counterattack?"

  Then Jessica felt a disturbance in the air. Felt mana pressing down on her as she looked up. She saw a massive array of descending spell shapes, not just Biomancy but Chronomancy, Geomancy, Dimensionality, and more. Static spells that were shaped like descending anvils and strange curved fists plowed into the ground and expanded first. The world was choked in a film of sparkling black mana, a film that quickly solidified, stopping anyone from teleporting out.

  Said field rattled against Jessica and Rusty, straining against her armor and the blade's mana. But more spells followed. A series of golden spears impaled themselves deep into the ground and created a spiraling array that lashed at Shiv. Jessica's armor screamed louder, vibrated faster. She could feel the Chronomancy in the air, accelerating everything within the array while everything outside moved at a far slower pace.

  Here was a Chronomantic trap to go with the dimensional one. Jessica watched as Shiv manifested his Temporal Armor, but it broke in an instant, unable to resist the time magic being pressed upon him.

  But while he was distracted with those spells, a chain of Biomancy slammed into him. His Aegis of Assimilation burned bright with crimson mana, but under a barrage of blood-colored artillery, Jessica could see his mana hydra tear open, spilling redness into the air. Then came the bolts of lightning that lashed at him from all angles. They split through his Biomantic field, crashing directly against his Shapeless Tides. A few bolts strayed from him, cleaving through the air to strike Jessica. She dodged them reflexively, parried one, and then immediately blinked across space to cleave a vampiric Aeromancer in half.

  The distance that she crossed to slay him was vast, and she found herself standing in a dark chamber surrounded by surprised First Blood Magi. Their minds were connected by translucent threads of Psychomancy, and their lead caster burned bright with violet mana. They were scrying the Deathless using Divination and bombarding him with siege magic—the most reliable way to put down an extremely dangerous Pathbearer you otherwise had no counter against.

  Jessica snapped back to her original position as her counter-attack skill came to an end. There, she saw more Dynamancy missiles slam against Shiv. He was being worn down from all sides. She couldn't even fully perceive him anymore. He was drowned under a sea of hostile mana, and even more artillery was plunging down from above to blast him apart.

  Leviathan of the Shapeless Tides was a great skill—but it absorbed and generated physical force to fuel its Magical Resistance and Grappling Proficiency. That meant concentrated magical attacks directed upon him were purely attritional.

  But even so, the Deathless wasn’t out of cards to play. His Pillar of Orichalcum glowed bright, allowing him to resist some of the more direct attacks, and he had enough tides to soak the initial barrage without harm—long enough for him to leave conte—

  Jessica blinked as a series of siege-Tier spells laid waste to the world below her. She wondered if her enemy was just bad at aiming, or if they had been bombing something—

  —xt. She remembered Shiv again as he blinked back into reality in a burst of white and red some eight kilometers to her left. He was little more than a flickering dot tearing into the distance, toward from where the hostile magi were bombing him. As always, he was pure, untiring aggression. He started releasing that pitch-black darkness from his body again, but this time, it didn’t matter. The vampires had assembled their own equivalent to the Poly-Magi. They had Diviners, and they pinpointed his position again before raining fire down upon him.

  This process was repeated several times, and Jessica followed behind at a distance. Every now and again, she found herself deflecting some spells directed at her. The Deathless remained the vampires' priority target, though. For good reason. He was loud. He was angry. And he was coming for them.

  But even though he got faster, even though his pillar grew denser, he was being hit by so many different attacks from countless angles that something was bound to get through. His Toughness held out; his Magical Resistance just couldn’t recover fast enough. And by now, he might’ve been running a bit low on vitality or whatever resource he needed to make everyone forget him.

  So, when a tunnel of focused Psychomancy ripped through the air and pulsed through Shiv, his body went stiff as all the vectors on his body were consumed. He clutched at his head but still didn’t stop—refused to stop.

  “So. What do you think, Rusty? Should we give him a hand in sacking the city he’s about to hit?” Her question was followed by a chain of massive spell patterns rising from all corners of the world, zooming toward him.

  “It was unwise of him to overextend so much,” Rusty surmised. “Even Legends can be overwhelmed through distance and concentrated attrition. One can only defend against so many skills for so long.”

  “That’s not a recommendation, Rusty.”

  “You have already asked. I know you.”

  Jessica laughed—just as a Biomancy bomb shredded through most of the kid’s remaining Biomancy. His body came apart in tatters of spraying blood, but he still just kept going—even as his body completely turned to gore and vapor around him. In death, his only response was to keep building speed, to avenge this death by getting to the vampires.

  Too bad for him. Jessica was going to get to the bastards first, and he was going to arrive at a city killed barren of martial and magi vampires.

  Jessica turned her attention upward and rose high as she extended her blade and increased her size. A resounding clang echoed through the world as she parried a few hundred descending spells with Rusty. Her armor’s instability reached a deafening pitch. But in an instant, she was drawn away from the place she once was and deposited upon her foes again.

  This time, her blade and blows fell as a titan would tread on an anthill. Buildings cracked open and toppled beneath her scything swing; death came raining down.

  And suddenly, the artillery spells got a whole lot scarcer…

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