Chapter 699: Final Battle

Yara grinned mischievously, completely ignoring his warnings that seemed very much real.

"You had us worried for a second. I honestly thought there was an Ascender in there." She let out a breath, the tension draining visibly from her shoulders.

"Just a Surpasser? Or two? Moon will take care of business, don’t worry about it. You can call everyone back and reopen the district. No need to keep the whole region evacuated and shut down every business over this."

Halvern and the second Surpasser stared at the two girls in pure shock.

They couldn’t believe the words coming out of their mouths. These were Moon’s friends. His close friends, one of them the daughter of an old Ascender. And they were discussing a regional-scale threat as if it was a mild case.

Are they coping? Is this denial? Have they simply refused to accept that their friend might die in there? Halvern thought, though he had the tact not to say it aloud. It was the only explanation that made sense to him.

The alternative, that they genuinely believed a single Evolver could handle two Surpassers, was too absurd to consider.

"By the way," Yara went on, glancing around the evacuated plaza, "is there anywhere good to eat around here? Or is everything closed?"

Halvern blinked.

"...All shops in the district were ordered to close for the evacuation."

"Tch." Yara clicked her tongue in disappointment. "Guess we’ll just wait for him then."

She turned to Selene, who was already grinning back at her.

"We should make him pay for making us wait this long," Selene said.

Yara nodded firmly. "Hell yeah..."

The two of them found a seat in near the command tent as if they were waiting for a friend to finish a long errand, entirely at ease, while the two Surpassers exchanged bewildered glances, utterly unable to reconcile the girls’ calm with the catastrophe their instruments were screaming about.

***

Back in the wasteland, Moon’s team was struggling against the horde.

The beasts had chased them, and the team had turned to fight after creating distance between them and the main battle.

But even thinned to under twenty, such a pack of Five-Star beasts was a brutal thing for six exhausted Evolvers to face. They’d grown stronger through the kills, their bodies taking in the experience and Lives from every beast they dropped, but it wasn’t enough against these numbers. They’d been fighting all day. Their mana was low. Their limbs were heavy. And the beasts kept coming.

Vela anchored the line, her cracked forearm screaming with every hammer swing.

Nina fought back to back with Marek, who was nearly dry on mana after keeping everyone alive through the archer fight. Theo and Elsa, both freshly resurrected and saddled with death debuffs, were operating at a fraction of their strength.

A Grizzler broke through Vela’s guard and slammed Kayn to the ground. The pack was pressing in from every side, and the gaps in the team’s defense were widening faster than they could close them.

"We can’t hold this!" Kayn shouted, scrambling back to his feet. "There’s too many, and I’m running on empty!"

"Marek, I need healing!" Vela’s voice cracked as she caught a charging beast on her shield.

"I’m out! I’m nearly out of mana, I can’t keep this up!" Marek shouted back in panic.

Nina cut down a Stalker and immediately had to twist away from a Snow Creeper’s claws, her breath ragged. "We’re getting surrounded! If we don’t break out now, they’ll pin us!"

"There’s nowhere to break out to!" Elsa loosed her last few arrows, her hands trembling with exhaustion. "They’ve got us circled!"

The pack closed in, and for a moment, real despair settled over the team. They’d survived a Surpasser only to be worn down and buried by its leftover horde. This was where it ended, cornered in the snow, out of mana, and out of options.

Then the ground shook with new footsteps, and fire erupted across the beasts’ flank.

The Arctic Fire-Prowler tore into the horde, steam boiling off its charcoal hide, casting flame that washed over the ice-armored beasts and cracking their frozen defenses wide open.

Behind it charged two Arctic Grizzlers, Moon’s own controlled beasts, slamming into the pack from the side and scattering the creatures that had the team surrounded.

Moon’s menagerie had come for them.

"Are those—" Vela’s eyes widened.

"They’re Moon’s!" Nina shouted filled with relief. "He sent them! He sent them to help us!"

The mood flipped in an instant. The Fire-Prowler carved a burning path through the horde, and the two Grizzlers hammered the pack apart, giving the team the opening they’d been dying for.

The circle broke. Suddenly six exhausted fighters weren’t surrounded anymore, they were flanking a horde that had lost its cohesion.

"He didn’t forget about us!" Theo laughed, half in disbelief, hauling himself up with strength. "Even in the middle of that fight, he sent us backup!"

"Less talking, more killing!" Vela roared, but she was grinning now, her hammer rising with fresh energy. "Push them into the beasts! Let’s clean this up!"

The team surged forward, reinvigorated, and with the Fire-Prowler and the Grizzlers tearing the horde apart from within, the tide of the fight turned at last.

***

On the main battlefield, beside the ruins of the shattered black spire, the fight raged on. Moon and the southern commander against the northern.

The archer looked nothing like the confident monster that had ascended an hour ago. Its transformed body was riddled with wounds, scored with cuts and burns and deep gashes, crimson blood streaming from a dozen injuries. The two-against-one had ground it down relentlessly, its own former rival matching it blow for blow while Moon worked from range, and the damage had piled up faster than it could heal.

Moon was the worst part of it.

Battered as he was, he was still an impossibly dangerous opponent to face across a distance. He settled comfortable into the support role that punished it most, casting from afar, loosing arrows, feeding debuff after debuff into the elf while the Beast Soul kept it locked in close combat and unable to escape.

His Freezing Cold ice slowed it, and his Purple Lightning weakened the archer’s soul, eroding its foundation.

Between the swordsman’s blades in front and Moon’s attacks from afar, the archer was being dismantled piece by piece. Before it fully understood how, it was losing the fight it had been so certain it was destined to win.

The archer threw back its head and released a war cry of pain and anguish, and its aura flared one final time, blazing brighter.

Moon smiled at the display of power, but felt no fear whatsoever.

This was no power-up skill, neither was it a trump card. This was the last flare of a creature desperate to survive, the final attack a cornered creature poured out when death closed in.

Like a candle burning hottest right before it guttered out.

Lightning crackled in one hand, as Moon’s second Raiju began to take form in moments. The southern commander stood facing the archer, not afraid of its power up.

"Let’s end this, then."

---

Author’s Note: Thanks for the support, I will release a bonus Chapter in an hour or two for the rapid increase in GT ranking!