Chapter 798: B-Black... Hole?

Chapter 798: B-Black... Hole? [Bonus Chapter]

FWHUMMP!

A roaring sheath of blinding silver flame swallowed the steel from the guard to the tip and turned the plain sword into a blade of pure purifying fire that hissed furiously against the damp air.

Three elder crawlers charged her at once however Aurelia swept the sword through all three of them in one wide two-handed slash.

SHRRRAAAK!

The burning blade sheared through their petrified shells like they were made of warm wax.

Silver fire burst out of the cuts and swallowed them from the inside out, and all three of them crumbled into swirling clouds of white ash before they even hit the mud.

A vine-spitter reared up behind her and spat but she spun, cut the glob of acid in half in midair and took the spitter’s head off on the follow-through.

TSSS! SHUNK!

Two more came at her from either side.

She stabbed the first through the mouth, yanked the sword free, ducked under the second one’s lunge and split it from belly to crown on the way back up.

SHLUNK! SHRRRK!

Up on the ridge, Silas rested his hand on the pommel of his longsword and pulled up her tab with a thought.

[Name: Aurelia El Mimonte]

[Title]: Saintess of the Argent Flame

[Mana]: 5500 / 5500

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Argent Flame]: Calls the silver fire of absolute purification. It burns away curses, abyssal miasma and the dark mana holding monsters together. (Cost: 100 Mana/cast)

[Argent Restoration]: Heals wounds, sets broken bones and mends damaged cores. (Cost: 150 Mana/cast)

[Argent Pyre]: Pours a roaring column of argent flame across a wide area. (Cost: 300 Mana/cast)

[Argent Edge]: Sheathes any blade she holds in argent flame, letting it cut through hide, bark and armor. (Cost: 80 Mana/minute)

[More]

’She really wants that reward,’ Silas thought with an amused grin, watching his gentle Saintess take the heads off two more spitters with smooth terrifying grace. ’I didn’t even think she could handle a sword like that...’

Twenty paces to the left, Lupina wasn’t about to let the Saintess steal the spotlight.

The wolf-girl tore across the western ledges like a silver hurricane... Her claws blurred in nonstop slashing combinations that turned roots, bark and wooden bones into a fine raining mist of sawdust.

SHRRK! SHRRK! SHRRRK!

She caught an armored crawler by its tail, swung it around her head twice and flung it into a cluster of three spitters, smashing all four of them to pieces in one hit.

KRA-KOOOM!

Then a whole pack of crawlers came pouring out of the brush at her together, a dozen of them at least.

Lupina’s ears shot straight up, and she grinned so wide it showed every fang she had.

’Wolf’s Fury!’

FWOOOOOM!

A blazing silver-and-white wolf aura exploded off her body.

She launched herself straight up into the air and came screaming back down like a silver meteor, and as she fell, she raked both claws down through the air with everything she had.

A thirty-foot crescent of razor-sharp wind ripped out of her claws and tore through the pack.

SHHRRRRAAAAAAK!

Every crawler in its path was split in two, and the ground under them was carved open in a long smoking trench.

Lupina landed in the middle of the wreckage in a crouch, her claws dripping with silver mana.

"AWOOOOO!"

Silas checked her tab too.

[Name: Lupina]

[Title]: Silver Fang Vanguard

[Mana]: 2600 / 2600

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Wolf’s Fury]: Erupts in a silver-and-white wolf aura and drops like a meteor, unleashing a thirty-foot crescent wave of razor-sharp wind from her claws. (Cost: 250 Mana/cast)

[Beast-Kin Burst]: Channels beast-kin mana into her kicks and strikes, launching targets with a heavy shockwave. (Cost: 50 Mana/cast)

[Pack Hunter’s Instinct]: Sharpens her hearing and sense of smell, letting her track prey and sense attacks coming from behind. (Passive)

[More]

’Morrighan’s at thirty-six,’ Silas thought, the gold ring in his eyes humming. ’Lupina’s at thirty-four, and Aurelia’s catching up fast at twenty-eight... It’s a bloodbath down there.’

Standing alone on a high mossy ledge that looked out over the whole mouth of the cave, Rowenna wasn’t smiling.

The Grand Runemaster stood with her small boots planted firmly on the stone and her notebook hugged against her ribs.

Her shy blue eyes darted frantically across the bottom of the hollow, following every move Lupina, Morrighan and Aurelia made.

Every time a monster dropped to a silver claw, a brimstone fist or a burning sword, a painful little twitch pulled at the corner of her eye.

’Thirty-six for the demon...’ Rowenna counted in silent mounting panic, biting her lower lip. ’Thirty-four for the wolf... twenty-eight for the Saintess... and I’m still sitting at eighteen! They’ve gotten more kills than me... a lot more...’

A heavy suffocating knot tightened in her chest.

She was happy for them... Rowenna really was. She loved them, and every dead monster made Aki’s territory safer.

But at this point... it was every sister for herself.

’I only just moved into the Keep...’ Rowenna thought, squeezing her notebook until her knuckles went white. ’I fought so hard to earn a room under his roof... How would it feel to get outclassed here too? To stand there tonight and watch Lord Silas take Morrighan or Lupina off for a special reward while I sit alone in my new room with my books?! No... absolutely not! I won’t let it happen!’

She looked down at the deepest widest part of the cave mouth.

Clustered around the roots in the middle, nearly forty fresh monsters were crawling up out of the dark, armored crawlers, huge bramble brutes and swollen old pods, packed together in a dense squirming sea of petrified wood and poisonous vines.

Rowenna’s shy blue eyes narrowed to razor points.

If she hunted them one at a time like Lupina, she’d never catch up... If she threw single runes like before, the others would steal the stragglers right out from under her.

She had to take everything out in one go.

Rowenna lowered her head a little and whispered a quiet guilty apology to her sisters down in the mud.

’Sorry...’

Then, behind the curtain of her violet-black bangs, a rare and utterly wicked smirk curved the corners of her lips.

’Not sorry.’

She raised her hand into the air, and the mana across the whole hollow began to bend toward her.

Four separate runic circles flared to life around her fingers at once, their glowing lines spinning, overlapping and locking together into a deep-purple web of terrifying gravitational force.

VMMMMMMMMMM!

The stagnant sulfurous air over the ledge twisted with a sudden violent pull.

Rowenna stood on the high mossy outcrop with her boots planted shoulder-width apart.

Her notebook hung beside her waist, caught in a swirl of violet mana that riffled through its pages like a rising gale.

The shy girl of this morning was gone... In her place stood the Grand Runemaster of Blessed Land, her blue eyes blazing with cold focus while her fingers carved thin glowing lines of runes straight into the empty air.

Up on the ridge twenty paces back, Silas felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up.

The mana in the hollow was draining away and rushing toward Rowenna’s fingertips in a tight alarming spiral.

He focused on her and pulled up her tab.

[Name: Rowenna]

[Title]: Grand Runemaster

[Mana]: 5200 / 5200

[Active & Passive Skills]:

[Omni-Elemental Runic Array]: Instantly inscribes high-tier multi-elemental runes into empty air or directly onto targets without requiring chant time or a physical staff. (Cost: 120 Mana/cast)

[Runic Gravity Well (20x)]: Inscribes an expanded, deep-purple gravitational array that multiplies downforce up to twentyfold (20x). (Cost: 300 Mana/cast)

[Ultra Runic Disruption]: Passively radiates a 50-meter aura that destabilizes incoming enemy spells and hacks complex barriers. (Passive)

[Gravitational Singularity Collapse]: Condenses a 20x gravity well into a microscopic black point, pulling all surrounding enemies, projectiles and fortifications violently into the center before detonating outward in a force wave. (Cost: 450 Mana/cast)

[Attraction Rune]: Marks a target or surface, pulling all surrounding objects, projectiles or enemies toward the marked point with immense force. (Cost: 150 Mana/cast)

[Runic Barrier Overwrite]: Instantly analyzes, bypasses and dismantles high-tier enemy barriers, sealing arrays and wards. (Cost: 200 Mana/cast)

[More]

Silas’s eyes went straight to one line, and his smile froze.

’I see,’ Silas thought with a wry grimace tugging at his lips. ’She’s going straight for the big one... Should I warn them?’

In front of her hand, the four runic rings slid into each other.

’Well I’d like to see the power for myself.’

Circles of deep purple ground against rings of starry silver, and their locking edges chimed with a high ringing tone that made Silas’s teeth ache.

KIIIIIIIIING!

’Gravitational Singularity Collapse!’

All of the mana she’d gathered crushed inward at once.

Hundreds of yards of it squeezed down into a single terrifying sphere the size of a walnut, hovering just above her fingertips.

The light around it bent, curling into a dark bottomless violet halo that swallowed the sunlight whole, and the tiny black point hissed like a snake in a cage.

TSSSSSSSSS!

Right as it settled, the mouth of the cave at the bottom of the hollow exploded.

KRAAASSSHHH!

Tons of shattered stone, splintered briars and black peat blew fifty feet into the air as the real master of the nest tore its way out into the light.

It was a huge iron-bark beast that had grown in the deepest rot of the hollow...

It was nearly thirty feet long from snout to tail, and its massive reptilian body was covered in thick overlapping plates of petrified black wood that gleamed like polished slate.

Its head was crowned with a jagged ridge of wooden antlers, and six muscular clawed legs dug deep into the stone while its mouth gaped open to show three rows of jagged wooden fangs, and it let loose a ground-shaking roar that blasted a wave of poisonous green mist across the hollow.

ROOOOAAAAARRRR!

The iron-bark alpha coiled its back legs and launched itself straight up the ledges, its sickly yellow eyes locked hungrily on the girl standing at the top, however Rowenna didn’t even blink.

Up on the ridge, Silas leaned forward with his eyes locked on her.

’Come on, Rowenna,’ he thought. ’Don’t miss.’

’Omni-Elemental Runic Array!’

A bright blue boosting rune flared to life under the soles of her boots.

BANG!

Rowenna shot forward like a fired ballista bolt and tore through the humid mist in a straight terrifying line aimed right at the charging monster.

’I have to aim this properly...’ Rowenna thought, her heart hammering against her ribs. ’If it lands on a leg, the pull will drag the center off course. It has to go right into the middle of its head, or this whole thing will go wrong...’

The iron-bark alpha saw the girl hurtling at its face.

Its huge petrified foreleg swept up in a crushing swipe to swat her out of the air like a fly.

WHOOOOSH!

The wind from the swing screamed through the ferns, and Rowenna held steady.

She flicked her fingers, and another rune bloomed under her toes.

She kicked off the empty air and shot straight upward, clearing the sweeping wooden claws by less than three inches.

The jagged bark grazed the hem of her coat as she flipped over the monster’s snout, hanging upside down in the warm air for one long heartbeat.

As she cleared its brow, her fingers closed around the humming black sphere.

’Should I add a Gravity Well rune to it...?’ she wondered, her mind racing through the numbers. ’Twenty times the downforce would make sure none of the smaller ones crawl away... but no. The pull would spread out too far. It’d drag the outer ledges down with it, and that would make it way too hard for the other girls to get out...’

She cut the second rune off before it could form and drove her open hand straight down as she dropped the sphere right between the monster’s burning yellow eyes.

TINK!

The tiny dense sphere sank into the petrified wood like a pebble into water and disappeared into the monster’s skull and for half a second, everything seemed to stop then the singularity collapsed.

VUUUUUUUM!

Space folded in on itself... The huge iron-bark alpha let out a strange choked rasp as everything inside its skull got yanked toward a single point.

The whole beast was dragged inward on its own center, its petrified armor folding, cracking and crumbling like dry paper as it was sucked toward the tiny black dot.

KRRRRRRUNCH!

The sound was sickeningly dense, the sound of thousands of pounds of wood, sinew and mana snapping, folding and vanishing as the thirty-foot monster was crushed down to the size of a wagon wheel, then a melon, and then it was gone, swallowed whole.

...The pull didn’t stop at the boss.

The dark violet edge of it spread outward and sent a howling wave of suction rolling across the whole floor of the hollow.

WHOOOOOOOOOOSH!