Tales of the Endless Empire

Chapter 428: This Fight Was Rated

At first, nothing happened as the pink energy rushed through everyone. It seemed that the other fighters were already used to this tactic and took a step back from Thalion. He tried to counter the pink mist or mana that was washing over him with his umbral miasma, which only barely worked. Some of the pink mana was just gliding through it before it was turned, which was very impressive given that his darkness was best against mana.Thalion could also immediately discern that there was no mental component to it, which he would have suspected by how it partly resisted his umbral miasma. Another reason why he had thought that it was a mental skill was the translucent nature, but that didn’t seem to be the case. Even when the pink mist penetrated his domain, it didn’t manage to go through his skin. The darkness surrounding his skin was a lot more potent than his domain.

Though the pink mist didn’t enter his body, Thalion didn’t want to wait in it until whatever was about to happen next. By how the other fighters had kept their distance, there was something bound to transpire, and just standing there and waiting for the pixie to unleash her full might was a bad idea.

The air was vibrating around the pixie while she was hovering ten meters above the ground. Then she started to point a finger at Thalion and Ryan while speaking.

“Morveal Aethrakar.”

Every word was infused with mana and echoed three times in rapid succession, as if she had three mouths that all spoke at once. The words sounded ancient and held power. It wasn’t at all like infusing words with mana while speaking. No, this was something completely different, and Thalion quickly jumped high into the air to get away from the pink mist before whatever the pixie did could affect him.

The next moment, the pink energies that had still been in his domain detonated in pink light. The shockwave was so strong that the whole domain was deleted, and he was flung through the air by it, but so far he seemed to be fine.

Good that the pink mist hadn’t entered my body, Thalion thought with relief while his eyes darted around to see what would happen next.

The first thing he noticed was that Ryan hadn’t been as lucky as Thalion. The Chosen was currently lying on the ground with his chest ripped wide open and his right shoulder separated, hanging by the waist and only connected by a few strands of skin. Thalion hadn’t thought that defeating a Chosen at this point was even a possibility—and not like that. Yet Ryan wasn’t looking good.

Just when Ryan shook his head, the leader roared.

“Eliminate the dark thing NOW. I will kill the fireboy.”

The lion-headed warrior sprinted forward, his heavy weapon held high. One strike would be enough to finish the already badly injured Ryan. All the others were now sadly going for Thalion, who was still airborne, which wasn’t optimal for the crippled eclipsari. He could solidify darkness under his feet, but that wouldn’t grant him the mobility he desperately needed.

Ryan wasn’t dead yet, and Thalion didn’t believe that a Chosen was unable to regenerate or lacked some kind of failsafe. Hoping that a bit of time was everything Ryan needed to get back into the fight, Thalion fired a barrage of spikes at the leader while also letting tendrils emerge from the shadows at his feet to root him in place.

He was over eighty meters away, which was just too much distance for Thalion to fire a spike from the leaders shadow. The tendrils were also not strong and only held the strong warrior for a second before they ripped apart. At least he had to sidestep the spikes, which bought Ryan two more seconds.

This was all Thalion could do for the Chosen as the first leopard head appeared before him, slashing with its claws. The beastkin must have simply leaped toward Thalion in one go, and Thalion wasn’t keen on engaging in melee—especially with the two empowered arrows going for his head.

The arrows were charged, which meant that Thalion would be injured even if they only passed by in close proximity. He shifted to Eagly and immediately made a sharp turn while excelling in speed tremendously, letting the leopard head only rip the air apart.

The downward slice was still strong enough to rip five claw-like arcs into the ground after missing Thalion, which clearly showed that they were no longer aiming for a slow win by draining his resources. No—every attack now was lethal. Not that the attacks before had been harmless, but now they were putting everything into their strikes.

Thalion had to do three quick turns and a looping maneuver to dodge the two arrows coming for him, one of them even changing direction mid-flight, which made it extremely difficult to escape.

From the corner of his eye, Thalion saw how the next leopard warrior jumped into the air to finish him off. This time, Thalion didn’t bother to dodge and just used Skydive upward to simply outrun the fighter. Tempest Glide was already active from the moment he shifted into Eagly. The wind hauled around Thalion’s feathers as he shot into the air like a bullet, with the beastkin having no chance to catch up.

Looking down, Thalion saw how the pixie pointed her hand at him while multiple needles formed out of the pink mist around her, all aimed at Thalion. A split second later, Thalion noticed that it wasn’t only the pink mist around her—but all the pink mist in the area. There had to be hundreds of needles that would come for him. The skill reminded him a bit of what Kaelir had used against him. Such skills seemed to be very popular when it came to killing mobile enemies.

Then Thalion’s eyes widened in shock when he saw the lion head standing before the still ground-bound Ryan. Ryan wasn’t looking like he was about to get up soon enough, especially since he only had a second before the leader’s weapon, already raised above his head, would come down. Then he heard the pixie speak again with that special voice.

“Morveal Aethrakar.”

The next moment, the needles were on their way toward him—and they were fast. He needed to do something drastic to turn the tide of the battle. From the way the pixie raised her arm and already opened her mouth, it looked like she was intending to detonate the needles too. His domain skills wouldn’t do anything, given that the umbral miasma had already failed to completely annihilate the pink mist. There was no hope that Eagly’s storm would do anything against those needles.

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Thalion thought and acted immediately without thinking much more about it. He switched to his human form and activated his bloodline skill, Emberform – Breath of the Pyre. His body disappeared from where it had been, and not a second too late as the pixie spoke again.

“Morveal Aethrakar.”

The whole sky detonated in another bright pink explosion. Thalion hadn’t teleported away—but downward. More accurately, he reappeared directly behind the iron-headed leader, where he instantly deactivated the skill to preserve mana while swinging his hand at the back of the lion head. Mid-swing, the claw of the Blooded Templar formed around his right hand.

The leader never expected something like this to happen and even tried to turn around, but it was already too late. The claw ripped through his armor and his fur. The moment Thalion entered his body, he used the active effect of the claw, shooting five arcs through the leader’s body, effectively bisecting the fellow.

The others hadn’t been fast enough to notice what had just happened and were only alerted by the screeching sound as the claw ripped through the metal plating of the leader’s armor. Thalion spun around with his claw strike so that he faced the turtle warrior, the two archers, and the healer who was lying on the ground mending her wounds. That she was even alive was a wonder in his eyes.

Thalion’s form was shifting again, and where he had been before, now the massive wyvern loomed in the air, breathing out poisonous mist at everyone around them. First it hit the healer on the ground and the broad turtleman who jumped before her—which did very little, because the healer was still lying inside the mist.

The two archers made multiple backflips backward to escape his breath. Thalion turned his head upward toward the pixie, and when the little thing flew higher, her wings glowing with pink light, he turned to the side where the other melee warriors were coming for him. They now also had to dodge the poisonous mist, which wasn’t easy—especially when you wanted to get close to Thalion.

The big wyvern form had been enough to distract them from Ryan, as all attention was now focused on him. The archers had quickly readied arrows and fired the moment it was clear that the green mist wouldn’t hit them. The arrows zoomed directly for Thalion’s head—but before they hit, the massive wyvern disappeared, and with it, the light seemed to vanish.

Thalion also decided to distract before trying to keep them occupied while Ryan regenerated.

“You have no idea what an Eclipsari is, you fools. Haha. Now you will scream in agony!” Thalion shouted manically. Even though the words had been chosen in haste, the dark voice of the crippled Eclipsari and the sheer malice in his aura delivered.

The attackers halted for a moment, which Thalion used to breathe umbral miasma into the air while blurring forward into the poisonous mist. The mist did great damage to anyone inside it, but against the crippled Eclipsari and his skin, it did nothing—the darkness simply consumed the green mist before it could do any harm. As long as he wasn’t directly breathed on, he was completely fine.

Thalion wasn’t trying to take down any of the archers, the fast leopard heads, or the pixie. No, instead he went for those who hadn’t had vision of him for quite some time. One of them was also blazing with pain, which was like a beacon for Thalion and his evil elemental. It was, of course, the healer and the turtle guy.

The healer was lying on the ground, with the poison now seeping into her wounds. The turtleman was still standing before her, his mace at the ready. Yet he didn’t seem to be able to see anything. For Thalion, who could see very well in the dark and had the Eclipsari’s intuition, the title, and the senses of his elemental, the fellow was the perfect target.

Just to be safe, he zoomed around him and jumped onto the turtle’s back. One hand grabbed the mace, since Thalion wasn’t sure if he even had a chance to get through the hard shell. With nothing left but his teeth, he bit downward.

The turtle reacted a lot faster than should have been possible and managed to move his head downward, which led to Thalion’s teeth only sinking into the top without getting a good grip to bite through it. The left hand of the turtle went up, trying to grab Thalion by the neck, while the thing began to turn.

Thalion tried to form an arm from shadows to go into a strength contest with the turtle, which turned out to be a bad idea. The turtle was so strong that he simply grabbed through the shadows, almost ignoring his shadows. Thalion had to react quickly and fully focused on the mace that was now also coming for him. Even while pushing as hard as he could with his right hand, his muscles already straining and his claws burying themselves into the turtle’s flesh, he couldn’t stop it.

Before the darkness surrounding his claws could completely immobilize the arm, he was hit by something and thrown backward. This was already going on far longer than Thalion wanted, and instead of trying again with the crippled Eclipsari, he shifted forms once more.

The head of the turtle guy was inside the shell, which meant he saw nothing—otherwise what Thalion had planned wouldn’t work. He had seen a few videos about alligators simply crushing turtle shells without much effort. The green mist was still thick enough that it should take a moment for the others to notice where he was. When they did, it would hopefully be too late for at least one of their party.

Thalion’s jaw closed around the shell with the sound of a metal trap snapping shut. From there on, Thalion began biting down as hard as he could. At first, nothing happened, and he almost thought that the shell could resist his might—which would have been crazy, given that the size of the turtle was nothing compared to his wyvern form.

Thalion bit down four times, while in the meantime only holding the turtle in the air to relax his muscles for a second before applying full force again. The crunch when the shell gave way was like music in his ears, and he dropped the turtle to the ground before stomping on it with his right leg, integrating the turtle warrior into the ground.

Yet before Thalion could shapeshift or do anything else, two arrows hit him. One punched a hole through his neck, while another went straight through his belly and out the other side. That hurt, to say the least, but Thalion clenched his teeth and shapeshifted into the crippled Eclipsari.

As Eagly, one hit with an arrow would have been enough to erase him, but as a wyvern, it wasn’t too bad. His spine was still intact, and the crippled Eclipsari would heal the wounds rather quickly as long as they didn’t multiply.

The next moment, the green mist was blown away, revealing his form to the open. The first thing he saw was a pink translucent river coming for him while the light warrior types circled him. It wasn’t looking good, and he would need to use his bloodline skill again to create some distance.

Since he had shapeshifted and used the breath attack, his mana hadn’t really regenerated, but he was still at sixty percent—which should be enough. It had to be enough.

Thalion could see anger on the pixie’s face as the mist drew closer and she readied herself to say the two words. Then it looked like the world was turning red as power exploded from where Ryan had lain.

The next moment, he was up in the sky, holding the pixie by the neck in his grip.

It didn’t look like a very pleasant position for the pixie, being so close to the apocalypse as her skin blistered and she shrieked in pain. Ryan was quite angry—but so far, fully healed. His arm was also back in the right place again, and his skin blazed as he shouted, his mana-infused voice carrying his words far and wide.

“YOU DARE TO FIGHT AGAINST THE CHOSEN OF THE CYNDERKING!!! I WILL SHOW YOU WRATH!!! I WILL SHOW YOU FIRE!!!”