Chapter 1282: Instant Assault
Chapter 1282: Instant Assault
Aigas looked darker than normal, even when accounting for its the sun, which was setting on the horizon. Everything seemed gloomier, and there were tremors everywhere, shockwaves of various energies in the skies and the distant sounds of screeches and screams.
This was fitting, honestly. Even though the Stark Troops had already started to suppress the enemies, it wasn't as if Skullius had expected results in the little more than twenty minutes head start he expected they had on him and Elita.
Speaking of the two - one, a four-armed entity with coin-grey skin and a vast, lead grey cloud over his body stitched together with threads of merigold Ju`wtte, and the other, a beautiful, dark-skinned woman with curly black hair and hazel eyes, adorned in a black and silver armour - they had appeared in what seemed like a ravine within an ordinary forest. Skullius was sure they were in Pelian.
The ivory key and even his new ability to open gateways to and from Aigas usually left him in a general five-kilometer radius of where he last used it.
The forest was eerily silent. No animals chirped, slithered or growled. Even the waters in the river close to them were quiet.
All birds and beasts had either hidden away or fled. But one would then ask where they hoped to nest which was safe. The presence of the Cavern was just that depressing, it seemed. They might not have wasted time terrorising ordinary creatures here, but their malice spread far all the same.
Elita had on a nasty frown.
"I can only imagine what this world will look like in a few more hours if nothing changes," she said. "How many Divine level creatures do you reckon are among the Cavern?"
Skullius wasn't sure, thus he investigated.
His expansive senses went out and covered the entirety of Aigas.
Because this wasn't the effect of some skill, he was able to spy on everyone and everything, except a few, without being noticed.
The numbers and circumstances of beings on every place in the world registered to his mind soon after.
He spotted his Stark Troops moving in accordance to the way he had arranged. They were swift and effective.
Skullius smiled.
'Well, they're doing better than I thought they would initially,' he thought.
He ascertained the progress of his Unlimited Stars. They seemed to be handling their respective missions well, especially Kintar in Emeradis.
The hordes of Cavern were outrageous. They were everywhere, flying, running or swimming towards every location with every living they could find. He saw some of them use their abilities and narrowed his eyes. The fact that their range of powers could practically be any unusual supernatural effect that could or could not be countered, would be a challenge for most of the forces on Aigas in general.
The stronger ones among them were clashing against the battle fiends of Maqi, the Six Houses of Pelian as well as what remained of the Capital Service, and the endless Mage companies in Emeradis, matching or overwhelming them. Their numbers made the battles tougher that they otherwise should have been.
Skullius found that the projection of the numbers of the Cavern he had heard had been severely understated, which was understandable given that a few Stark Troop members had been the ones to gather these figures. In all, there seemed to be roughly 120 million Cavern, and a large chunk of that number was assaulting the Severed Union at the moment.
For the moment, Skullius disregarded the presence of wandering powerhouses decked in their Majestic Territories roaming all over Feinheath. These were evidently the invading experts from the past, but he knew for a fact that none of them were Divine.
The presence of Divine level beings was hard to pinpoint actually, Skullius found.
Unlike everyone else, they were able to respond to his sensory inquisition. Some immediately vanished from his senses, as if they didn't exist, and some turned and glared his way.
"It's hard to tell, but those I found are roughly thirty. Some of them are on their way here, I'm afraid," Skullius said to Elita.
The former Paladin Champion sighed.
"You're going to have to deal with them. I still haven't recovered all my Voided Death Essence, and I'd rather save it for something that you might actually need help with," she said as she folded her arms.
Skullius gave her an odd look.
He knew she could assume her Voided Deathform... form, which wasn't human, like Aurolio and don a mask that would represent the astonishing powers of the void, but if she considered normal Divine opponents as beneath her... just how much stronger did she get with the boost of that mask?
Voided Death powers were still weird to Skullius. He didn't quite understand them.
"Your Voided Death Essence just recovers with time?" he asked her.
"Yeah. But there's also several points in the great void I can use to recharge. Void is quite doting," Elita said brightly.
"Lucky," Skullius said bitterly.
Even with a Null Core, Skullius still needed to slaughter living beings to obtain Null Life Essence or use [Null Extraction] on those recently dead. Then again, the skill [Null Extraction] had grown obsolete ever since he reached Divinity, along with the other non-Class related and non-Race related Null skills. But that wasn't a bad thing. Not at all.
"Here they come," Skullius said with a cold smile.
"And they're all yours. Unless they go out of their way to come for me, that is," Elita shrugged.
Over them, hundreds of meters in the sky, dozens of dark, shapely creatures built like dark rocks with ruby red eyes appeared and began storming down. Their charge towards the ground, from below looked like a masterpiece of a painting - one hundred and forty-four Cavern with grotesque wings and bizarre faces, behind them a sweet, obscure sky with pale
cloud.
It was almost poetic.
But Skullius shattered the image at once.
His Amras was beckoned from its well in his Broader Existence.
Right as that happened, six figures within the charge of Cavern noticed and vanished from the
whole.
'Clever,' Skullius thought.
The Hybrid Warmoth had a pair of pupilless, iris-less eyes. Above them, were odd eyebrows narrow and short, the skin under them protruding slightly.
But no. These weren't eyebrows.
They were eyelashes.
They quivered as Amras was channelled towards something behind them. In the next micro- instance, the clustered eyelashes parted, between them, a thin, slanted gap forming which widened to reveal a brilliant shimmer of green and gold that altered the state of the world as
Skullius perceived it!
This was the Andori, [Legion Eyes]!