Chapter 107: Island Battle (2/3)

Emberpike Vanguard Kaldris reached Kaevan Dross first.

The Mythic-rank combat unit came down the terrace with a spear of burning iron. It drove the point clean through Kaevan’s shoulder plating in one thrust.

Kaevan let it happen.

He did not pull away. He grabbed the spear shaft with his free hand and dragged himself further onto it, closer to the unit holding it.

"Good arm," he said.

Then he pressed a sphere into the gap in Kaldris’s chest plating and stepped back off the spear.

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[ Detonation Sovereign: Chain Ignition ]

```

Every sphere Kaevan had dropped on that terrace went off in one linked instant. The one inside Kaldris went off with them.

The Mythic-rank unit blew apart from the inside.

The blast rolled outward through Kaevan’s formation and killed forty of his units. He did not appear to notice or care because he had enough Tower Points to summon 400 units more for the next siege.

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[ Emberpike Vanguard Kaldris destroyed. ]

```

Billy’s head snapped around.

’That was a Mythic.’ Something cold went through him. ’He killed a Mythic by letting it stab him first.’

---

Serai Vokh had not attacked anything yet.

She had spent the entire battle walking the eastern terrace at a slow, steady pace. Nobody had thought to watch that side.

She had been marking points in the air the whole way.

Her talent did not care about armor. It did not care about barriers or shields or how much HP a target had.

Severance Point cared about one thing only, and that was position.

Stormglass Lance Idrell found her first. That was the worst mistake it ever made.

The Mythic-rank unit lunged. Serai touched the air beside her with one fingertip and pulled.

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[ Severance Point ]

```

Space folded along a line thinner than a hair.

Idrell went past her, still in the middle of its lunge. It came apart into two clean halves that kept traveling forward before either piece hit the ground.

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[ Stormglass Lance Idrell destroyed. ]

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Nightshale Fang Verrick came at her from behind and above. That was the correct approach.

It died faster than Idrell had.

Serai did not mark the spot where Verrick was. She marked the spot where Verrick was going to be.

The cut was already waiting there when the unit arrived.

```

[ Nightshale Fang Verrick destroyed. ]

```

She flicked something off her sleeve and kept walking.

"Kaevan," she called across the terrace. Her voice stayed flat. "The big one. Do it now."

---

Terry saw it coming, and he did what Terry always did.

The Ironmaw Battleship’s spinal cannon had been charging since the ram struck the causeway. When it fired, the beam was wide enough to erase the entire western wall.

Winsmoke was standing on that wall. So were four turrets and two production units.

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[ Aegis Transference ]

```

The Terravault Sentinel pulled every bit of that beam onto himself instead.

It struck him full on. He held.

His armor went white, then red, then started peeling off in sheets. Living Armor fought to grow it back faster than the beam could strip it away.

He was holding. He was going to hold.

Then Kaevan set off the sphere he had stuck to Terry’s back earlier in the assault.

He had placed it while the Sentinel was rooted in the stone, unable to move, with all of his attention aimed at the sky.

The bomb went off between Terry’s shoulder plates at the exact moment the beam finished chewing into his core.

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[ Terravault Sentinel destroyed. ]

```

The wall did not fall. Terry had already done his job.

But Terry was gone. Every unit on the island felt his Bulwark Convergence drop out of the shared defensive field at once.

Solveig screamed something that was not a word.

---

Billy stopped fighting the small units after that.

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[ Form Switch ]

```

His twelve Void Motes slammed back into his frame. The Duskwoven Void Harbinger stopped being shaped like a person.

Duskfall Leviathan rose off the terrace on wheels of dark light. His hull unfolded into something built for exactly one job.

He turned toward the Ironmaw Battleship.

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[ Kinetic Doom Drive ]

```

Billy went intangible and crossed nine hundred meters of open water in less than a heartbeat.

He turned solid again inside the Ironmaw Battleship’s hull.

The battleship’s spine broke in half. Billy came out the far side trailing burning wreckage, then swung around for a second pass.

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[ Voidfall Cannon ]

```

The beam went straight through the Ironmaw Battleship’s magazine. The magazine did what magazines do.

The blast lit the sea white for two kilometers.

Every surviving enemy unit on the terraces lost whatever the ship had been feeding them. Their formation fell apart in seconds.

Sonic and Winsmoke cleared the terraces. Kroth’s war engine cleared the beach.

That left two people standing.

---

Solveig found Kaevan Dross on what was left of the causeway.

Kaevan did not run. He set his feet and pulled two more spheres off his belt.

"You are the aura," he said. "Kill you and this whole island gets weaker. I have been saving for you."

He threw both spheres and did not wait to see them land.

The first one went off in the air. It was a blinding flash and nothing else, and Solveig’s vision whited out.

The second one rolled in behind him. That one was real.

The blast caught Solveig in the back and threw him twenty meters up the causeway. His armor cracked open across the shoulder.

Kaevan was already moving. He threw four more spheres in a wide ring around the spot where Solveig was going to land.

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[ Detonation Sovereign: Chain Ignition ]

```

The four bombs went off together. Solveig took all of it at once.

He got up anyway.

That was the part Kaevan had not planned for. Every wound Solveig took made his next swing worse for whoever gave it to him.

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[ Crimson Dawn ]

```

The crimson veins in his armor burned brighter as his HP dropped. His sword grew heavier and hotter in his grip.

"Keep going," Solveig said. His voice stayed calm. "You are helping."

Kaevan’s smile finally slipped.

He threw everything he had left. A rolling wall of chained detonations came up the causeway and hit the Vorpal Lord head-on.

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[ Aegis Eternal ]

```

Solveig’s barrier ate the blast. Then it converted it.

Every bit of force Kaevan had just spent came straight back out on Solveig’s next swing.

The strike caught Kaevan across the chest and threw him the full length of the causeway. He hit the stone, rolled twice, and pushed himself back up onto one knee.

He was still standing after that. That said something real about him.

He also knew exactly what was coming next.

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[ Wrathful Judgment ]

```

Solveig raised his sword. The air around the blade turned red and heavy.

Kaevan looked at it and did the math in his head. He had seen execution skills before. He knew what his HP bar looked like right now.

’That lands and I am gone,’ he thought. ’Not hurt. Gone.’

"Serai!"

She was already there.

Serai Vokh cut a line in the air between Solveig and Kaevan.

The blade came down and struck the cut instead of the man. The strike went somewhere else entirely, and the causeway behind them split wide open.

She hauled Kaevan onto his feet with one hand. Then she looked past him at what was coming.

Billy’s menacing voice reached her ears first before she saw him.

"Don’t you dare think you can fucking escape!"