Chapter 689: – Trouble in the Whistling Woods (2) |
Archibald and Machaon’s battle was one of pure strategy.
The powerful bloodline and rare affinity that had allowed the former to eradicate all of House Tantalus by himself sadly didn’t scale very well into the higher grades. While each promotion tripled both the number of clones that he could sustain and the strength of their bodies – thus allowing him to essentially grow his power geometrically – his minions weren’t nearly as mobile or easy to control as he would have liked.
He had spent centuries learning how to coordinate dozens of clones, but this was his first time directing several hundred. The constructs of flesh and magic were relatively quick on their feet, yet they couldn’t fly, nor could Archibald lift more than a few into the air. He was considered a monster on the ground, though his overwhelming strength didn’t do him much good when his opponent refused to approach, taunting him from above.
Granted, this wasn’t a new problem for Archibald.
Blues and Violets were also capable of flight, which was why he had come up with various clever ways to leverage his abilities a long time ago. This was one of the reasons he had attacked House Tantalus in their own headquarters instead of luring them out into a more neutral battlefield. He had infected them with his disease before they had even left the confines of their home or had the chance to slip through his fingers.
For the same reason, he had to get a little creative to hold his own against Machaon.
His army of clones could do a lot of damage to the enemy Greens if left unchecked. Spreading them across the forest, Archibald tried to sway the outcomes of the smaller battles happening between his relatives and their opponents, tilting the scales of the war once more and forcing Lord Asclepius to intervene.
Countless purple projectiles rained down upon the mindless thralls, shattering their limbs and scorching their flesh. Unfortunately for Machaon, Archibald could heal his own body and, by extension, his clones much faster than he could heal other people at the same grade.
The enemy White could get around that by expending more mana, but that only introduced more complications. If he rushed, Machaon risked drying his core up and exposing himself to Archibald. Ignoring most of the clones to focus on a few wasn’t an option either, because the rest would massacre his mages.
‘He clearly knows how to fight against a life mage.’ Archibald clicked his tongue.
Unlike the patriarch of House Tantalus, Machaon was extremely mindful of the diseases that the clones were carrying. Not only was he quite thorough whenever he destroyed one, but he had also manipulated the environment to protect his troops from the airborne sickness. He had methodically set fires across the forest, using his domain to bolster the hill-sized flames even further and incinerate the magical disease using scorching air mixed with smoke.
At the start of the battle, Machaon had tried going after Archibald directly, but flying too close to the ground had placed him within reach of the jumping clones. Lord Asclepius was much faster than Archibald, and so were his plasma spells, but it wasn’t very difficult to dodge them when they were fired from hundreds of metres away.
Another thing Archibald did was consume some of his life mana to heal the lighter injuries of his relatives or mend their fatigue. Whether it was through the use of his bloodline or regular magic, he had taken a bottom-up approach in this war. He was trying to help his Greens and Blues win their own battles before they could help him.
Sadly, it wasn’t working very well.
The situation on the ground was relatively stable for now, and Machaon didn’t have a good way to end the war quickly, but Archibald’s clones were dying at a consistent pace of about a handful per minute. In fact, the White could have probably slaughtered them even faster had he rushed, though he had opted to keep his core nearly full throughout the fight.
Creating even a single new clone from scratch took several hours, meaning that every destroyed minion marked a permanent loss for the purposes of this battle. Archibald’s influence on the other fights shrank along with his army, and it wouldn’t take more than half an hour for his opponent to decide that it was safe to descend closer to the ground.
Strangely enough, the dying clones weren’t what Archibald was most worried about. He wholeheartedly believed that his Blues would deal a lot of damage to the enemy forces by the time his army was destroyed, and that their reinforcements were likely to arrive sooner. It was something else that was weighing heavily on his mind.
‘Where is House Ypnos or the Divine Root? Weren’t they working together? And where is the supposed secret weapon that Machaon has spent the past decade preparing?’
Archibald hadn’t believed the disgraced patriarch’s earlier words that he was merely trying to weaken Percy’s allies. Judging by how careful the White’s underlings were, the gods probably hadn’t allowed them to deal too much damage to House Avalon.
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‘It’s a trap. He’s trying to bait Percy out of the Fungal Spire,’ Archibald realized, his heart sinking.
It wasn’t a secret that his grandson cared about their House. Machaon didn’t know about Percy’s artificial advancement, but he still probably understood that Percy was more powerful than the average Violet. Lord Asclepius had probably judged that his target was more likely to join the battle if it looked like a close one, which was why he was hiding his strength and trying to avoid scaring Percy off.
Understanding Machaon’s motivations didn’t change much. Archibald’s family was still in a tough spot. Even though the Great House had probably been ordered to spare those with the Clone bloodline, nothing would prevent them from butchering everyone else. Archibald had no choice but to hope that his grandson had completed his preparations in time.
***
Galahad had never regretted consuming the lotus petal and upgrading his lightning affinity to acid. The composite element was deadlier and more flexible, and a decade had been more than enough time for him to get used to his new affinities. The three colourful patterns glowing across his skin, along with the corresponding external flows were proof of that.
The acid pattern was rather similar to water, except for its purple colour and the fact that the wave-shaped lines on Galahad’s skin and the corrosive bubbles entering and exiting his pores were shifted by a few millimetres from the azure ones. The two sets of tattoos and external flows intersected at the same spots where a network of indigo lightning bolts passed, a dense film of electricity crackling around Galahad’s frame.
Despite his newfound proficiency with acid and water, there was no erasing his four centuries of experience with lightning, nor was it very realistic for him to expect his mastery of the new elements to catch up within a mere decade. That was why Galahad had spent a lot of time thinking about how to use acid and water to support his original fighting style.
The second-in-command of House Avalon was currently facing a Violet with a fire affinity. Despite his high grade, the poor mage clearly hadn’t qualified for one of the three petals that the Great House had been given. He wasn’t a match for Galahad by himself, but he was accompanied by a pair of Blues with earth affinities. One of them even possessed an annoying bloodline that allowed him to momentarily mess with Galahad’s senses.
Outnumbered, outgraded, and outbloodlined, Galahad had been on the backfoot since the start of the battle. He was faster than his opponents, so he at least didn’t have to worry about his safety, but he had yet to find a way of breaching their defences.
Half of the acidic blobs he had launched at them had missed entirely, while the rest had failed to eat through the walls of stone that the Blues kept erecting to protect themselves and their superior. The waves of vertigo rattling Galahad’s brain every time he tried to attack certainly weren’t helping.
Everyone could see that Machaon would eventually whittle down Archibald’s clones, so his generals were more than happy to stall.
Galahad wasn’t concerned, however. His boosting art had allowed him to keep his core and channels nearly full, despite his lavish expenditure. He hadn’t wasted his time either.
‘This should be about enough,’ he thought, glancing at the acidic pools that he had slowly accumulated beneath him and his opponents.
There was at least a dozen of them, each body of liquid several metres wide and a couple deep. Galahad estimated that they contained over four times his total mana reserves, and that was after taking his boosting art into account. Stretching his domain to the ground, he allowed his willpower to envelop the corrosive liquid, tugging at something stored deep within it.
After countless experiments with his new affinities, Galahad had figured out how exactly the three elements were connected. Acid was essentially just charged water. The electricity split the liquid into two opposite – but equally corrosive – components.
These polarized components were mixed together, and they constantly wanted to violently recombine, though they were held apart by some property of the lightning mana that Galahad still didn’t fully understand.
What he did understand, however, was that he could remove this property at will. Doing so would lower the barrier keeping the corrosive fluids apart, allowing them to recombine into water while releasing most of the energy that he had invested to separate them.
And that was exactly what he did.
Thick indigo bolts shot out from the acidic pools to light Galahad’s body up like the midday sun. His skin blistered from the extreme heat as he struggled to control what was essentially enough mana to threaten even a White. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to last longer than a few seconds in this state, so he had every intention of making them count.
Shifting his gaze back to his opponents, he locked onto the man with the irritating bloodline and his Violet superior. Galahad didn’t care as much about the other Blue right now.
Over thirty crackling lances of condensed lightning formed by his side, each as large as the trunks of the trees that his acidic pools had melted. He launched them at his two targets, a dozen blasts at a time.
Thunderous shockwaves filled the entire forest as Galahad’s extravagant spell momentarily caught the attention of every other Blue and Violet on the battlefield, though he didn’t really mind the audience.
His opponents struggled to dodge the rapid projectiles, putting up whatever hasty barrier they could to block the rest. Panicking, the mage with the bloodline activated it once again to hinder Galahad’s aim. It worked – to an extent – though only a fraction of the attacks had to connect.
The few lances that didn’t miss melted through the walls of stone as if they were paper, incinerating the Blue and severely injuring the Violet. The latter could still fight, though his flesh was scorched black and one of his arms crumbled away, making him much less of a threat.
[Congratulations! Your spell has evolved: Wrath of Roaring Heavens – Masterful -> Wrath of Roaring Heavens and Corrosive Seas – Masterful!]
‘A little on the nose, but I suppose it did the trick,’ Galahad thought as he brushed away the notification.
The spell had left him in a rather pitiful state. His skin was covered in burns and hurt from head to toe as the smell of ozone still filled the air around him. His reserves had nearly dropped below the threshold of the Dance, and the pools on the ground had been reduced to puddles of regular water. Even so, there was no question that he had won this exchange.
Of course, his small victory didn’t mean much in a war this messy. It simply made another pair of enemy Blues decide to stop harassing his relatives to gang up on him, bringing the total number of mages that he had to face back up to four.
With a heavy sigh, he flew aside to avoid an incoming meteor, taking one deep breath after another to prepare for round two.