Chapter 133: The Phantom Queen
Chapter 133: Chapter 133: The Phantom Queen
Chapter 133: The Phantom Queen
Nyx held the invisible blade in her bare hand. The sharp steel had cut deeply into her palm, but she did not flinch. The pain was just another tether to the physical world, a beacon feeding information directly into her Awakened Mind’s Eye.
The glowing white outline of the Guardian flickered in the absolute dark. For the first time since Nyx had entered the ancient tomb, the maniacal spirit radiated pure fear.
"Impossible," the Guardian rasped, his voice trembling inside her head.
"You are just a human girl. You cannot command the dark. Let go of my blade!"
The Guardian tried to rip the shadowy knife away. He could not move it a single inch.
Nyx did not speak. She stepped forward in the pitch-black void. Her movements were entirely silent. She had shed her human reliance on sight and sound. She could feel the intricate, shifting spatial coordinates of the Guardian’s ethereal body.
Nyx twisted her wrist violently.
CRACK.
The Guardian let out a pathetic, garbled scream as Nyx shattered his spectral wrist. She ripped the dark knife completely out of his grip. Before the ancient assassin could retreat into the void, Nyx lunged.
She did not use her obsidian daggers. She used his own weapon against him.
With flawless, lethal precision, Nyx drove the Guardian’s shadowy knife directly upward into his glowing white core. The blade pierced his spiritual heart.
"A woman belonging in the kitchen just gutted you," Nyx whispered into the dark.
The Guardian opened his mouth to scream, but no sound came out. His massive ego shattered into a million pieces. The sexist, psychopathic spirit dissolved into fine black ash, completely erased from existence by his own flawless art of death.
The absolute dark of the trial immediately broke.
The eerie purple crystals lining the cavern walls ignited once more, casting long shadows across the stone floor. But the trial was not over. The true legacy of the Phantom-Weaver was just awakening.
The cavern walls began to bleed.
Thick, viscous darkness leaked from the ancient stone. The purple crystals flickered rapidly as the temperature in the room plummeted to a freezing crawl. Nyx stood in the center of the room, watching as the shadows physically detached themselves from the walls and the floor.
They did not form into human shapes. They formed into nightmares.
Thousands of erratic, ghastly figures materialized in the air around her. They looked like rotting, floating cloaks of pure void. Skeletal, shadowy hands protruded from their tattered sleeves.
They possessed no faces, only gaping black holes where their mouths should be. They were identical to the mythical dementors from ancient human fiction, but these were terrifyingly real.
They began to wail.
It was an erratic, high-pitched cacophony of chilling whispers and screams. The sound bounced off the cavern walls, carrying a freezing, unnatural dread that would send a violent chill down the spine of any living creature.
These were the remnants of the ancient Phantom-Weavers. They were the mindless beasts left behind in the dark, waiting for a worthy vessel.
The thousand floating horrors swirled around Nyx in a chaotic, screeching tornado. Then, all at once, they stopped. The ghastly beings bowed their hooded heads in absolute submission. They sank into the ground, completely merging with Nyx’s own shadow.
Her shadow expanded, turning into a massive, pitch-black lake of writhing, hidden monsters.
Nyx felt a massive surge of knowledge flood her brain. She understood her new authority. She was the Phantom Queen. She had absolute control over these one thousand erratic shadows.
She also inherited the terrifying ability to forge brand new shadows from the corpses of her enemies, though the mana cost to create new ones was extraordinarily high.
But right now, she had an army of one thousand starving beasts at her beck and call.
---
Outside the massive stone gateway, the squad was completely out of luck.
Draven Mordis stood on the far flank, his black Vanguard coat whipping in the toxic wind. He held his glowing Magical Arrow knocked in a high-tech composite bow. Hovering above him, the Level 150 Two-Headed Miasma Wolf leaped from the cliff, its jaws opened wide to swallow him whole.
Draven released the bowstring.
FWOOSH!
The Magical Arrow streaked upward like a reverse meteor. The sheer pressure of the shot parted the heavy gray clouds of the Miasma Gorge.
KABOOM!
The arrow struck the massive wolf dead in the center of its chest. A blinding explosion of pure kinetic and magical energy erupted in the sky.
The Level 150 Beast was instantly and violently severed in half. Its burning remains rained down into the toxic fog.
[System Alert: You have slain a Level 150 Mutated Miasma Wolf.]
[System Alert: Massive Experience Gained.]
Draven lowered his bow. Astraxion chirped happily from his shoulder, having soaked up a massive amount of residual experience from the catastrophic blast.
But on the other side of the valley, the squad was collapsing.
They were heavily under-leveled for this zone. The endless sea of Level 90 beasts had drained their mana reserves to the absolute bottom.
"Get behind me!" Bram roared at the top of his lungs.
Bram activated his full Titan ability, unlocking the absolute peak of his Giant Legacy. His body violently expanded. His muscles bulged and hardened into impenetrable gray titan-stone. He slammed his massive shield against the rocky ground, casting a powerful, wide-range taunt.
Every single beast in the valley, including the colossal Level 130 Magma Goliath, turned their glowing eyes toward the giant boy.
Bram braced himself.
CRASH!
The Level 130 Goliath slammed its molten fists directly into Bram’s shield. The sheer physical force was apocalyptic. Bram gritted his teeth, blood leaking from his nose as he was violently pushed backward. His boots carved deep, long trenches into the solid bedrock.
"We cannot break through its armor!" Aegon shouted, thrusting his Blood Fire Spear desperately into the swarm of smaller beasts trying to flank them.
"My traps are empty!" Lyra yelled, reloading her mechanical bracers with trembling hands. Cole stood beside her, his mechanical gauntlets overheating and smoking.
Estella and Natalie fired their remaining ranged attacks, but the Goliath completely ignored them. The massive boss raised both of its magma-plated fists, preparing to crush Bram and the entire squad into a bloody paste.
They were out of time. They were out of mana.
Suddenly, the ancient stone gateway of the Phantom-Weaver tomb blew open.
An unnatural, freezing wind swept across the bloody valley. The temperature dropped so fast that frost formed on Aegon’s armor. The toxic gray Miasma violently parted.
Nyx stepped out of the darkness.
Her eyes were glowing pure white. Her obsidian daggers hummed with dark energy. Her shadow stretched massively across the canyon floor.
Nyx raised her hand and pointed at the horde.
A thousand screeching, ghastly horrors erupted from her shadow.
The Dementor-like beasts poured over the battlefield like a tidal wave of nightmares. The erratic, chaotic movements of the shadows sent an immediate chill down Aegon’s spine. The sheer horror of the summoned army paralyzed the human students.
But the shadows did not attack the squad. They swarmed the monsters.
The mindless, floating horrors wrapped their skeletal hands around the Level 90 beasts. They unhinged their faceless jaws and violently sucked the HP directly out of the monsters.
The Miasma beasts did not even have time to roar. Their bodies withered into dry, decaying husks in a matter of seconds.
The thousands of erratic shadows swarmed over the Level 130 Goliath, clawing at its magma armor and draining its life force at a terrifying speed. The boss roared in absolute agony, flailing its massive arms blindly as the chilling shadows consumed its vitality.
"Lucien! Now!" Nyx’s voice echoed, cold and commanding.
Lucien did not hesitate. He saw the perfect opening Nyx had created.
The lightning swordsman gripped his Thunder Rapier. He channeled the very last drop of mana inside his core. Blue and gold lightning arced violently across his body.
CRACKLE!
Lucien became a bolt of pure, blinding thunder. He darted past Bram’s heavy shield, moving faster than the eye could track. He launched himself directly at the Goliath’s chest.
He executed his ultimate Thunder Thrust ability.
SHING!
The thin blade of the Thunder Rapier pierced perfectly through the weakened magma plating. The blade struck the Goliath’s glowing internal core with absolute precision.
SHATTER!
The core burst into a thousand glowing pieces. The Level 130 Goliath froze in place. The massive behemoth crumbled into a mountain of dead ash, blowing away in the freezing wind.
Lucien landed softly on his feet, his rapier smoking.
The valley went entirely silent. The entire horde was dead. Nyx lowered her hand, and the thousand terrifying shadows immediately retreated, sinking back into the dark lake beneath her boots.
The squad breathed heavily, collapsing to their knees in sheer exhaustion and relief. They had actually survived the abyss.
But the silence did not last.
A shadow eclipsed the dim light of the gorge. An earth-shattering roar vibrated through the bedrock, shaking the loose stones around their feet. It was a sound so loud it made the Goliath seem like a whimpering puppy.
Stepping out of the deep fog on Draven’s side of the valley was a nightmare. It was a massive, four-armed Level 180 Miasma Dragon-Ape. Its body radiated a terrifying, suffocating pressure.
The squad stared at the colossal beast in absolute horror. They could not lift their weapons.
Draven Mordis stood in front of the towering monster. He looked over his shoulder at his exhausted, bloodied, and terrified squad.
A confident, terrifying smile spread across the Warlord’s face.
"You all leveled up," Draven called out over the rumbling gorge. "Do you want to try and defeat this one together?"