A shockwave of green, corrosive energy blasted outward. Thauren grunted in pain, his boots carving two deep trenches in the limestone gravel as he was knocked backward fifteen feet, the leather over his breastplate smoking and blackening from the acidic touch.
"If the old relic won’t give me the tribe, I will build a new one over your corpses!" Thorne screamed, his arms spreading wide as he threw his head back toward the sky.
SCREECH!
A terrifying screech echoed from Thauren’s body, but it was not human.
The atmosphere around Thorne violently warped. The air grew heavy with the rancid, sulfurous stench of decaying marshes. From his sun core, a massive, semi-translucent manifestation of raw essence exploded upward into the heavens.
It was his materialized spirit.
SCREECH!
A foul, suffocating, sickly purple light burst from Thorne’s spine.
The air around him grew instantly ice-cold, reeking of rotting carrion and dried blood. From the dark mist behind him, a massive, grotesque spirit materialized... a twenty-foot, hideous Carrion Vulture with ragged, oily green-purple feathers, a sharp, hook-like skeletal beak, and long, phantom talons dripping with spectral poison.
The skeletal vulture spread its massive phantom wings, wrapping its spectral form tightly around Thorne.
His obsidian blade became coated in a thick, shimmering layer of corrosive purple spirit-essence, while phantom feathers fluttered around his limbs, increasing his lightness and agility tenfold.
Thauren wiped a smear of smoking acid from his chest, his eyes narrowing to razor-thin slits as he looked up at the terrifying, winged abomination towering over him.
"Then let the ancestors judge us, traitor," Thauren barked, his voice filled with absolute, unyielding defiance.
Thauren slammed the butt of his broadsword into the limestone slate. He reached deep within his solar plexus, tearing open his spiritual reserves and pouring every drop of his remaining essence into the air above him.
RROAAAR!
A primal, golden thunderclap echoed across the valley.
BOOM!
A blinding, golden light erupted from Thauren’s back. The dust on the ground was instantly blown away in a thirty-foot circle as the essence around him churned and compressed materializing into a towering, magnificent spirit manifestation... a colossal, twenty five-foot Golden Lion.
The phantom beast possessed burning golden eyes, Its majestic, burning mane was made of crackling, golden physical essence, its sharp, metallic claws tearing hypothetical trenches into the ether.
It bared its golden fangs at the rot-dripping vulture, its roar restoring a sudden surge of courage to every loyalist warrior who heard it.
The Golden Lion did not just float as an illusion; it merged a part of it seamlessly with Thauren’s physical body.
Golden ethereal claws overlapped his broad hands, thick spectral fur armored his shoulders, and his eyes ignited with the absolute, unyielding feral dominance of an apex predator.
Across from him, Thorne’s face twisted into an ugly, cruel grin.
"Predictable. Simple-minded Brute" Thorne spat.
"All loyal Veynar! Release your spirits!" Thauren roared, his voice layered with the deep, echoing double-tone of his Golden Lion spirit. "Do not hold back! Burn your cores! Fight for the Warchief! Fight for the Veynar!"
The command echoed across the broken, scattered ranks of the loyalists like a sacred decree.
Since earlier, the Veynar warriors had refrained from summoning their spiritual manifestations.
Spirit materialization was the absolute pinnacle of their ancestral martial heritage... it allowed a warrior to merge their physical body with their spirit beast, granting immense stat amplification, elemental attributes, and devastating combat maneuvers.
However, the energy cost was staggering. Activating a spirit manifestation drained a practitioner’s internal essence reserves at a catastrophic rate.
In an endurance battle against a numerically superior foe, using it too early was equivalent to committing suicide once the essence ran dry.
But now? With their Warchief crippled, the traitors exposed, and the black-armored reaper creating absolute bedlam in the Coalition ranks, there was no reason to save anything. There was no tomorrow if they failed today.
"For the Veynar!" a bleeding Veynar veteran screamed, throwing his bone axe into the air.
GROAN! CRACK!
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
A wave of wild essence erupted across the entire Veynar ranks.
The primitive, physical battleground instantly transformed into a dazzling, high-fantasy arena of spectral war. The air hummed, crackled, and burned with multi-colored light as hundreds of Veynar warriors unleashed their spiritual bonds simultaneously.
Layer 2 warriors, lacking the essence density to manifest full beasts, materialized partial spirit traits... spectral glowing, claws wrapping around their forearms, phantom scales coating their shoulders, or glowing beast-eyes granting them instant, supernatural reaction speed.
Layer 3 veterans pushed further, materializing half-spirits... phantom upper torsos of wolves, spectral armadillo plates, or glowing serpent tails coiling around their legs, amplifying their strikes with immense physical force and elemental armor.
And the handful of surviving Peak Layer 3 ones, alongside Thauren, manifested full, fifteen to twenty five feet spiritual avatars that roared in unison, their roaring spiritual pressure pushing back the surrounding Coalition warriors already panicked in terror.
"Kill the traitors! Break the Coalition!"
The loyal Veynar warriors surged forward like a pack of divine, empowered beasts.
A loyalist veteran with the materialized head and claws of a Raging Bear slammed his spectral paws into a traitor guard, crushing his chest plate like tin and sending him flying thirty feet into the stone cliff.
Another loyalist, possessing the partial spirit of a Thunder Falcon, moved with lightning speed, his spear leaving trails of blue electricity as he pierced through three Coalition warriors in a single, continuous thrust.
A loyalist warrior, his legs broken, let out a hysterical laugh as a ten-foot, translucent Iron-Hide Bear materialized over his upper body.
When a Zerith spear-bearer tried to run him through, the bear spirit let out a silent roar and slammed its massive, ethereal paws down, flattening the Zerith soldier into a crimson stain on the rock.
The Veynar, though heavily outnumbered, fought with the sudden, terrifying ferocity of a tribe unleashed from its mortal restraints.
Their battle cries mixed with the roars of their manifested spirits as the flanks of the battlefield transformed into a churning sea of phantom claws, roaring golden beasts, and spraying blood.
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