Book 9, Chapter 77

Chaos

Nearly a hundred reaper warships in the centre of the closest formation suddenly disintegrated, Richard’s figure blurring as he blinked to the next group. The planes all around him either fell apart or just exploded, and he moved on once more. He kept flickering as he pierced into the depths of the reaper base in mere moments.

The rest of the group fell far behind, but they followed and each chose one of the broken formations as a target. Although there were only a few of them, each one left a trail of explosions in their wake. Surprisingly, Fiora was actually one of the people with the greatest impact, using sticky abyssal flames that burnt all around her with seemingly no end. Those warships that were stuck would slowly melt apart under the heat, and dodging was extremely difficult because these flames were near-invisible.

Mountainsea’s method was entirely different. Her metal rod that was hundreds of tonnes in weight left swathes of darkness in mid-air that didn’t dissipate, pulling in everything within tens of metres and crushing it with a distorting force. The reapers were tenacious, the crashed planes morphing back together under a magnetic pull, but the parts that couldn’t be salvaged ensured that fewer and fewer enemies survived each subsequent strike. The ideal way was to melt or otherwise completely destroy the machines, but in such a crowded base that was only a pipe dream. Fiora was the only one that could launch her abyssal flames over at times, melting the reforming warships. However, she was also the slowest of them all at killing, taking a long time with each cluster targeted.

Energy beams formed a large web up in the sky, a constant barrage striking everyone with no end in sight. Fiora kept adding layers of magma shields to protect her, but they were being destroyed faster and faster every time. Her fighting style was seen through far more easily than the rest, quickly forcing her onto the defensive.

Asa weaved in and out with her giant sword, bursting apart the reapers she came across. The warships were oftentimes broken down to a point where only half was left usable, but those halves still joined together with others to form new enemies. Her totems twinkled constantly, one when she attacked and two more allowing her to blink from target to target.

Unlike the barbarian who simply shrugged off the attacks, Greyhawk used a much more conservative approach. He constantly blinked around to keep the enemy from targeting him, but after several weeks of fighting he had also come up with his own effective ways at battle. An electric net formed by orbs of lightning connected to each other detonated the energy cores within the warships it covered, sending them barrelling to the ground. Even the larger warships took a while to return to combat.

Each person in this attack squad was a peak expert of some sort, but there were still too many reapers for them to handle. Even the most relaxed of them, Nasia, was starting to take things seriously as her divine armour found itself unable to deflect all of the incoming energy. While any warships in her vicinity were destroyed simply by her reflection of the incoming attacks, she was starting to focus on targets instead of a blind barrage.

Richard didn’t have an easy time either. He faced nearly half of the reapers on his own, and barring his path to the core of the base was a crisscrossed forcefield of energy beams that even he wouldn’t dare blink around. Thousands of warships fell at his hands, but even if a reckless charge threw off the reapers enough for them to strike their own, he still suffered a mass of bruises. The over ten thousand warplanes in front of him had formed a silver tornado hovering at the edge of the coast, protecting what could only be the mothership.

This was the only way to end it. His speed suddenly shot up as he approached his limits, starting to move around the tornado of warships while dodging their concentrated power. Only his near-complete analysis of the warships allowed him to swerve and deflect accurately; a slight mistake would leave him dead.

However, the reapers weren’t so easy to deal with. Most of the warplanes gave up on their concentrated fire after a scant few minutes, instead starting to shoot randomly. Without the time to defend himself, he was met with a huge section of energy beams that locked him down long enough for the attacks to converge once more.

The night sky went pure white for a moment, but then all of the light was drained away. A dim ring of energy suddenly pulsed from the centre of the darkness, distorting all the warplanes caught within until they were broken apart. The ripple spread without obstruction, tearing a huge hole into the tornado of warships even as it revealed Richard within its core.

Richard had tucked himself up and held his knees, a faint tetrahedral barrier rotating around him. All of his clothes had vanished, including his legendary sword case. Only the beast-tooth necklace and three divine blades survived. Even the barrier wasn’t complete, and in the section where it had been broken nor was he. An exceptionally smooth cut on his calf had taken his entire foot away, revealing the squirming flesh underneath.

The Projection of Ruin was capable of enhancing the laws of destruction, the counterattack capable of neutralising the combined strike of so many reapers, but the effort had also drained the spell entirely. He would be completely obliterated if he sustained such a barrage again.

However, he now had a chance.

Richard suddenly opened his eyes, his entire body diving into the hole in the tornado with a blazing trail behind him. Three faces appeared around him in tandem, spitting out fireballs of different colours that destroyed the reapers all around.

“Destroy. Summon,” he started chanting in divine tongues of chaos, order, and neutrality. His hands waved constantly to outline portal after portal to summon through.

The first summon was a dragon, pulled here against its will and dazed from the sudden changed. It clawed in front of it through pure instinct, but even as it sent a dozen reapers flying away a powerful beam struck it dead-on and burnt it into a pile of charred bones.

Dozens of other dragons soon followed, most magical but with some real creatures mixed in. The magical dragons didn’t seem all that threatening, but the real ones crashed into the reapers around them like cannonballs.

There was a small commotion amongst the warplanes once more, the command system apparently distracted by a battle pattern that it could not identify. However, the break was only momentary as the ships resumed operations seconds later, finding their step once more. The energy beams formed a large web that accurately struck the dragons without killing their own, eliminating a majority of the summons instantly.

However, the dragons were merely a distraction. A large chant in divine tongue was finally completed, and an enormous beam of light descended from the void and covered the entirety of the weyr in Sharon’s demiplane. All of the dragons were morphed into light that was whisked away.

Around Richard were now three towering portals. One spewed out dragons, the other a variety of creatures from demons and devils to lich kings, while the third shot out an endless gorde of nightmare creatures.

This time, the reapers finally descended into chaos!

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