The Matriarch roared and horrors followed. Hundreds more poured out of their pits and swarmed the entrance to Forontia, their mouths gaping and demanding sustenance.
The guards and adventurers that were out in the field were already getting overwhelmed, only aided thanks to the branches that came by to take out the troubling horrors one by one, but it wasn’t enough.
When faced with a wave of monsters aiming to take an entire city down, they couldn’t do anything else to give in to the numbers.
Yin did her best as she commanded the wood around her to continue taking down the many horrors that persisted. Plants grew and grass spread to bind many of them down and keep them at bay while the other adventurers took them out. More than a dozen of these horrors were taken out one after another, but hundreds just kept pouring in.
Yin considered retreating then, her mana unable to hold on any longer. She felt for the people below, but her own life was at stake. She had only just received her freedom, and she wasn’t willing to give up her very life just to help the strangers around her, especially for human strangers. Yet she still persisted.
Because she knew that the man who had been taken out would return, and she would be remiss to show any shame towards that benevolent spirit.
Something rushed past her, a powerful torrent of wind that was invisible to the eye. It nearly blew her away, but her strong body was able to withstand the force generated by that flying figure.
She smiled then, knowing full well who it was. In contrast to the tepid atmosphere surrounding her, something entered the scene which caused the entire field around her to be alight in a pleasant glow.
“Nice job, Yin!” She heard him shout, sounding a lot more vigorous than she had ever heard from him. “Now leave it to me!”
She was more than glad to show off that she could indeed handle things even without the benevolent spirit. She crossed her arms, letting her mana flow as she kept working on defeating the horrors as the solution to this demonic plague had arrived.
…..
Aidan rushed outward as far as his overpowered body could handle, and it could handle a lot more than he was used to.
The pill didn’t just enhance his stats, but it also enhanced every fabric of his body and even his control over his mana. It supercharged his brain to the point where he could split reality in twain and still have enough energy to do what he wished.
But all he really wanted to do was to give that bitch of a boss what’s coming to her. When he approached and she saw him coming, the Matriarch clearly recognized something changed as it didn’t just passively stand by and let him do as he wanted anymore.
Her arm swept up as a wave of horrors were summoned, directly used as an attack meant to swallow him whole. Aidan activated his Area Field and let his Rend fly as hundreds of horrors were erased from existence just from him crashing straight through the wave. He burst out from the attack, crafting the elements to mix both air and the newly learned fire to send to the Matriarch.
A twister of flames exploded outward, drenching the Matriarch in its heat. Aidan kept pouring it like a flamethrower, making a fly-by around the Matriarch. At the same time, many flying horrors followed after him, only to be met with demise as soon as they hit the Field filled with his Rend. It was a constant drain on his magical reserves, but the pill was keeping up with the regeneration effect.
He could tell immediately that if he didn’t, he would actually feel like exploding, so he would rather just let it all out while he could as he tried to make his plan work. He kept closing in towards the Matriarch, taking advantage of its giant body to get the upper hand. As soon as he got close, his Field reached the layer of her skin and began to twist the layer off of her body.
Lasers soon came out to the field, trying to track and take him down, but he was fast enough to avoid the lasers while still keeping up with his flight path. Throughout all of this, as the world around him became suffused in explosions and smoke, he finally recognized what was going on.
Using his senses, he noticed that some of the horrors on the ground, ones that didn’t get close to the walls of the city to attack and were just standing by, slowly withered and disappeared into motes one by one. It was slow at first, and there was nothing around that could’ve taken them out to cause them to disappear. That only proved one thing.
The more damage the Matriarch took, the more horrors were taken out of the equation. That should’ve made sense considering that the Matriarch was made entirely out of these horrors, but it looked like she could regenerate herself with the bodies of the horrors surrounding her. Whether they were actually separate or perhaps deeply connected was something he couldn’t tell, but there was another plan in place for this.
He got back into the air, pulled resource balls out of his spatial bag and began crafting. This was all while he was still avoiding the lasers aiming to take him down along with the arm swipes of the Matriarch trying to hit him again. Slowly, swords began appearing as he made his weapons one by one, increasing the number by cutting corners and only focusing on the parts that mattered for now.
He made crude looking swords, almost like pikes without a guard or even a working hilt, but they fit the description of a sword as dozens were made, then hundreds more.
Without another thought in mind, Aidan sent his swords down to every horror on the ground, putting his Split Mind into use. His mind expanded and his head was already aching, but each sword flew out and rained down upon the horrors as they struck each one. While that didn’t take their cores down, they flew with enough power and momentum to cause the struck horrors to disappear from the sheer force brought down upon them.
More and more horrors were taken out all while Aidan kept flying around the Matriarch, keeping his Area Field open with Rend still active. A combo that wouldn’t have worked if he hadn’t had his mana regenerating at such a crazy pace.
And soon enough–
“Gyaaah!”
A powerful shriek that was high-pitched, like the sound of a squealing violin string, echoed out into the air. A powerful wave of air ensued from it, but Aidan kept flying about, keeping himself steady as he dealt more damage to the surface area of the Matriarch.
He also noticed that the giant creature was actually being reduced in size the more he kept attacking. As the horrors slowly dwindled down, the Matriarch was starting to lose its looming pressure, proving that she was running out of horrors.
As he expected, the Matriarch had a limit of how many horrors she could summon. It was easy to imagine the creature would be able to infinitely make horrors out of nowhere, but considering that she had a level, that must mean that she had to have a resource.
And resources could be drained if you know how to target them.
Aidan flew across the sky, avoiding the lasers all while commanding the flames to keep raining down onto the Matriarch. At the same time, his swords targeted each horror that was on the ground, already killed before the Matriarch could use them to recover the parts of her body. As such, her size kept diminishing, and more of her anguished cries were released.
That’s when he finally spotted it. Right at the center of the torso where it kept reducing in size, he spotted what looked like something glowing deep within. It was small, almost grain-sized, but he could spot it. All because his Sense Vibrations was finally able to pierce deep within the darkness of the Matriarch’s soul. Unlike the normal horrors, where it was as inky black as night, what came from the Matriarch was something else.
Almost otherworldly in its glow and feeling. It sang in that strange, alien-like tune that felt foreign to his ears. It was almost mesmerizing if it wasn’t for the fact that it brought him to feel shivers all across his body. It was malicious in nature, nowhere near as bad as the criminals that filled the Grim Corner with their nasty souls.
I… will not…
Aidan’s ears perked up when he heard a voice so faint, yet it almost drowned out the constant explosions as he listened further.
I… will not die…
He sensed the Matriarch’s soul rising in anger, fury and hatred, mixed with that primal sense of survival as finally, the eyes of the Matriarch glowed a hellish color.
To the likes of an inferior being like you!
The absolute disgust in its tone of voice, sounding more and more like the squeaking melody from its soul, resonated in Aidan’s soul as all of a sudden, the Matriarch vanished.
Horrors scattered and flew all around him, creating a dome-like state that surrounded Aidan entirely. The sky was blocked out, as well as the surrounding area as the Matriarch split herself up all for the sake of one thing–to trap Aidan.
“Fuck!”
Aidan halted his attack and reversed course, aiming straight towards the small opening that was slowly closing little by little as the horrors increased their numbers. But soon everything blacked out as the final opening was closed off, trapping him in the void made entirely of the Matriarch’s own body.
Not only was it completely dark in the physical realm, but entirely dark in his senses as well, all except the tiny grain of glowing energy filled with enough malice to take over the world. It floated off in the distance, providing what little light it could provide.
He already sensed the surroundings slowly festering in that dark energy that the horrors were filled with, slowly corrupting the air around him and trying to poison him from the inside. If he didn’t get out quickly, he was going to suffocate here before he could do anything else to the Matriarch.
Suddenly a physical impact hit him, his right arm crushed underneath the blow as he was blown away before catching himself with the crafted wind. Blood flowed from his mouth before another force hit him from behind. Aidan had no other choice but to keep flying around, literally going blind as the Matriarch controlled the entire field around him.
He was inside her body, and the body was treating him like a foreign entity. Without being able to see, he was forced to be under constant attacks he couldn’t sense, dealing damage over and over. The rate of attacks kept increasing as lasers were now included, which provided the tiniest source of light he could see to get him out.
He was in a literal hellzone where every move could be his last. Knowing all that, there was really only one way to get out of this situation.
“If nothing else, go for the throat!”
He crafted whatever air was left within this hellzone, boosting the friction in order to create a rocket-like propulsion that pushed him towards the glowing grain beyond. All the while, he had Phase activated, allowing him to pass through the physical strikes coming in from all sides.
Unfortunately that brought about the side effect of feeling that negative dark energy flowing through him in the metaphysical sense that was hard to describe. An unusual sort of pain flowed through him, forcing him to stop casting Phase before managing to avoid a heavy strike just by pure luck.
But he kept pushing forward. Whenever he would get the slightest sense that something was off, he would cast Phase to pierce through any obstruction, ignoring the stabbing pain he would feel from the dark energy trying to corrupt him.
He felt his face being soaked, proving that he was bleeding from the orifices as he forced himself to keep going. He kept flying straight towards the glowing grain which acted as the very core of this entire being. He wasn’t sure why the Matriarch decided to completely entrap him within her own body when the core was visible enough for him to find, but perhaps she grew desperate when the amount of horrors kept decreasing.
That meant he was in the last spurt. He kept pushing, forcing his stats to work overtime as he prepared one last spell to try.
He brought out another resource ball, crafting it in place to form a sword. He had made so many swords that he could craft one into existence in just a second. But he made a little adjustment. At the very tip of the blade, he cast Infuse with one single spell in mind–Rend. He pushed the very concept of the spell itself into the tip, empowering it further than he ever could possibly by mentally pushing it beyond its usual limits thanks to his heightened stats.
All the while, he focused all his efforts on improving the spell with Magic Boost and Magic Focus, strengthening it to a single tip. He didn’t need to expand the spell with Area Field as that would only decrease its potency. Instead, he condensed it all into a single point.
Ignoring the peril his body was going through, Aidan roared as he pushed onward, forcing the sword straight forward using the one thing that could tip in his favor. With all his boosting spells and the Sword Proficiency skill in his kit, he lunged forward and struck at the grain, the singular target within this hellscape of a being.
For a moment, he stood in place, all of the momentum so far suddenly freezing in place. Something was holding him back, forcing the very momentum to cease.
It was what little willpower the Matriarch had to stop him in his tracks. He wasn’t sure how, but the dark energy used to corrupt him was acting like a wall to stop him from moving. He was already pushing himself to the limit, but now the wall of dark energy was keeping him in place before he could deliver a true strike to the core.
He wouldn’t have that, not one bit. Not when he used everything in his arsenal to pull off the attack. Using Sense Vibrations, he searched within himself and gathered up all the energy he gained from the enhancement pill within his body. It circulated throughout his entire body, practically enhancing the very core of his being. But now he gathered up all the energy from his body in slow amounts and, with careful and adamant focus of his willpower, poured it all into his arm, to his hand, and straight into the sword itself.
He felt the energy gained from the pill enhancement drain from his body, and the dark energy slowly burning him alive, but the sword became alive with power as he felt the momentum finally picking itself back up, as though time had stopped but has now slowly begun to tick forward again. He kept roaring, burning his very throat with the effort as he pushed and pushed.
And pushed.
The sword tip finally pierced the single grain, and soon everything became blinding white as the momentum picked up. His brain could barely understand the next few moments, but he felt his body rushing forward and eventually breaking through the inner darkness and finally stepping out into the natural light outside.
Bits of horrors flew everywhere around him, their faces left gaping as Aidan flew out into the open air before eventually landing straight onto the ground. His bones broke and his muscles tore up as he landed multiple times on the ground before finally stopping.
With one last look, he glanced upwards to find the giant ball of dark horrors with a noticeable hole that he came out of. Seconds later, the horrors that made up the dark ball soon dissipated one by one, each one becoming motes that transformed into mist that flew across the wind.
And just for added measure, a bit of dawning sunlight came into view from the distance, the mist dispersing slowly to reveal the light draping across the landscape, revealing the completely messed up entrance of Forontia, but somehow still standing.
Aidan let out a dry chuckle, smiled a bit, and let his head drop to the ground.
There was no way in hell anyone would complain about the work he did.
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