Chapter 197: For The Family!

He dodged both elements with brisk movements, and leaped over various spear throws. His eyes flashed with calculation, and he immediately slammed one hand on the earth.

"⸢Entropy Wave⸥"

A violent, rippling pulse of decaying energy exploded outward from his palm. The earth instantly rotted, turning to loose ash.

The leading Elven Knights, mid-charge, found their footing completely erased as the ground gave way, sending them stumbling forward into the ash.

Before they could recover their balance, Percival thrust his open hand forward and activated ⸢Soulscorch⸥.

From his wide palm, torrents and torrents of purple flames burst out and engulfed all of the attacking Elves.

Mercius and Willow were present and fighting so he didn't have to worry about mana because of his Title, Undead Creditor. He spent as much as he could on the flames of ⸢Soulscorch⸥.

The Elves shrieked, clutching their chests as the flame temporarily crippled their ability to channel aura, dropping them to their knees.

But the Wind Guard was relentless.

More Awakeners vaulted over their incapacitated comrades, their blades glowing with lethal intent.

Percival straightened up, his eyes narrowing. "You're all distracting me."

He tapped into the deepest reserves of his Summon Space and extended his hands once again.

"Attack."

With no time wasted, blue spirit-things burst out of his palm, and his Demon Summons took over the battlefield.

The Manor Vampires. The Nightwraiths. The Revenants.

They attacked the Awakeners, leaving them shocked and already half-dead just by the sight of them.

They were not permanent. Percival could feel their existence burning like candles at both ends—seconds, maybe a minute before they returned to the Summon Space. But a minute was all he needed.

The demons fell upon the Wind Guard's rear ranks with savage, mindless ferocity. A Vampire dragged an Elven Archer from his saddle, fangs sinking into his throat before the man could scream.

A Nightwraith passed through a Storm Knight's ward like smoke through a fence, and the knight convulsed, frost spreading across his faceplate.

The Revenant simply waded in, each swing of its massive blade sending Awakeners flying.

"What sorcery is this?!" an Awakener shouted, backpedaling from a Vampire's lunge

The brutality of the Demons instantly broke the Elven formation, forcing them to scatter and defend themselves against the abyssal threat.

Percival finally had a clear sight to the noblewoman.

"Outworlder!" she cried!

"Elf Lady!" he cried back.

A few yards away, Willow was a masterpiece of lethal velocity.

Two female Elven Swordswomen, realizing they couldn't match her speed individually, attempted to flank the spectral Knight.

They moved in perfect synchronization. The elf on the left lunged low, thrusting her rapier toward Willow's thigh, while the elf on the right leaped into the air, bringing a curved scimitar down in a decapitating arc.

Willow dropped her center of gravity, angling her spectral blade downward to catch the rapier's thrust perfectly on her crossguard.

With a sharp twist of her wrist, she locked the Elf's blade in place. In the exact same fraction of a second, Willow leaned her upper body backward, feeling the wind of the descending scimitar slice a millimeter past her visor.

Using the locked rapier as a pivot point, Willow launched a devastating front kick directly into the right Elf's descending kneecap.

The bone snapped with a sickening crack, sending the woman crashing into the dirt.

Willow immediately released the blade lock, pirouetted to her left to dodge a desperate backhand slash from the remaining swordswoman, and drove the pommel of her sword brutally into the side of the Elf's helmet.

As the woman slumped, Willow finished the sequence with a clean, precise thrust through the gaps in her shoulder armor, disabling her arm entirely.

She stood tall after, looking around the field.

"Dieee!!!" she heard a Barbarian yelling behind her.

She turned, activating ⸢Bladewave⸥ at the same time. A ⸢Bladewave⸥ that sent the Barbarian to oblivion.

Across the arena, Commander Theodore urged his hissing wind-drake into a full sprint, leveling his heavy cavalry lance directly at Mercius Seagrave's broad back.

"For the Family!" Theodore bellowed, channeling every ounce of his magic into the tip of the weapon.

Mercius turned slowly, not raising his sword. He simply planted his feet and brought the massive Paragon Shield up.

Theodore's lance struck the S-Grade shield dead center.

The sound was like a thunderclap. The kinetic force exploded outward, kicking up a massive cloud of dust. But Mercius didn't yield a single inch.

The heavy wooden shaft of the cavalry lance bowed under the absurd pressure, splintering and then violently exploding into hundreds of wooden shards.

Theodore's eyes widened in horror. Before the Elven commander could draw his sidearm, Mercius stepped inside the drake's guard.

The giant raised his armored fist and punched the beast squarely in the jaw. The drake's eyes rolled back, and it collapsed in a heap of scales and limbs.

Theodore was thrown from the saddle, tumbling hard across the dirt. He scrambled to his knees, drawing his longsword, panting heavily. Mercius loomed over him, a mountain of blue fire and steel.

With a terrifyingly casual swing, Mercius batted Theodore's longsword away, grabbed the commander by the front of his breastplate, and hurled him through the air.

Theodore crashed into a rock wall, groaning once before slipping into unconsciousness.

Percival and Eristasia continued their battle at the center of the field.

Eristasia was back in her Griffin. She swooped down from the sky, the beast shrieking as she leveled her spear.

A group of five heavily armored Elven shield-bearers had reformed their line between Percival and the diving Griffin, attempting to trap him in place for their lady's strike.

Percival's eyes darted to the corpses of the dead Elves lying just behind the shield wall. He raised his hand.

"⸢Corpse Explosion⸥."

The corpses violently detonated, sending bone shrapnel and death mana into the air. The explosion ripped through the backs of the shield-bearers, instantly shattering their formation and throwing them into the dirt, their armor shredded.

"Stay out of my way," Percival said, irritated by their constant intrusion.

"Die!" Eristasia screamed from above.

The Griffin's talons extended, and Eristasia thrust her spear, unleashing a concentrated, spiraling drill of wind magic directly at Percival's head.

"⸢Radiant Guard⸥," Percival commanded.

The shimmering dome of hard-light manifested above him. The wind-drill slammed into the construct, causing a blinding spray of sparks. The hard-light cracked, spiderwebbing under the royal's immense power, but it held just long enough.

Percival dropped the guard, gripped his sword with both hands, and channeled his mana into it.

"⸢Bladewave⸥"

He swung the Basilisk Blade in a brutal upward motion. The arc bypassed Eristasia entirely and slammed into the Griffin's right wing.

It didn't carry ⸢Soulscorch⸥ this time, just the usual, physical Swordsman mana. Aimed to hurt the body.

The beast shrieked in agony as the force of the skill sheared the wing completely off.

The Griffin tumbled out of the sky, crashing violently into the earth and tearing up a massive trench of dirt.

Eristasia was thrown from the saddle, rolling violently across the field before coming to a halt.

She forced herself to her knees, her sapphire-studded armor dented, her face smeared with dirt and her own blood. She looked up, her red eyes burning with a grief so profound it seemed to warp the air around her.

"You took her!" she screamed, her voice breaking into a sob so ragged and desperate. "You took my everything! You can not leave this place alive!!"

"I WILL NOT ALLOW IT!!!"