Chapter 386: Guardians Unite

The towering guardians form rippled as the last of the lesser guardians cores were fully absorbed into its body. Its size having ballooned up after begining to consolidate them all.

From a creature around the size of a horse, the crocodile headed bit cat now stood just shy of 4 meters tall.

Now for a normal beast or monster that size would be considered to be quite tiny. However, in this dense jungle growing any bigger than that could start to cause some noticeable problems when it came to movement.

Yet even with the limited space within the jungle the boosted guardian did not seem out of place. If anything it seemed even more in tune with the biome than any other guardian that Violet had encountered.

Its domain blended perfectly with the environment all around it, making it hard to distinguish where the beings domain ended and nature began.

The only delimiting lines noticeable was where the guardians domain came into conflict with Violet’s own.

Still that line was by no means clean cut.

The guardians domain pushed into Violet’s own, constantly seeking out any advantage to crush or perhaps assimilate Violet into itself as it had done with all the other guardians present.

Naturally Violet was quite opposed to such a fate befalling her, as such she responded in her favourite way, with violence.

Dozens of runes flashed to life, their purple radiance capturing the guardians attention for a moment, then from each rune a pitch black void chain shot out, each one intent on binding and restricting the creature.

At the same time Violet unleashed a barrage of attacks, void boots and spears leading the charge.

Yet this was no simple guardian, it would not falter at the first hurdle Violet threw at it.

Its domain seemed to solidify, reality around it suddenly grew impossibly dense, then with a pulse of power it burst outwards.

The chains that were reaching out towards it impacted that expanding ripple, they paused for a moment as if frozen in time. Then with a sound of shattering glass each chain broke apart, whips of void fluttering to the ground before being consumed by the guardians domain.

The ripple did not stop there, spreading out and impacting the barrage of normal attacks Violet had sent its way.

Whilst the bolts imploded upon themselves, the spears at least managed to somewhat push past the ripple, only the impact with said ripple caused the spears to be deviated from their original route and flying off into the undergrowth behind the creature.

Only then did the guardian respond.

Violet felt a blinding flash of danger coming from below. She did not hesitate for a moment before she blinked away, reappearing some distance away from the multitude of roots that had emerged from the ground right below Violet.

The only reason she had even been able to react in time no doubt due to her domain extending somewhat into the ground itself.

Still Violet did not escape unscathed from that opening attack. The root having tore right through her left arm, leaving a nasty cut that reached all the way to the bone.

She grimaced slightly at the pain, yet did not allow it to distract her, after all pain was something that Violet was all too familiar with, she would not allow something so trivial to distract her from a fight.

Violet kept up her endless barrage of attacks, a constant stream of bolts and spears flying towards the guardian. Yet the monster did not seem at all phased by this, primarily utilising its domain as a defence against her attacks.

Annoyingly for Violet she felt like it was actually working as less than a quarter of her attacks even came close to hitting the guardian.

Even that final quarter was near effortlessly blocked by rapidly growing roots that batted the attacks away.

Violet grimaced as she was forced to constantly retreat, never able to remain stationary for even a moment less she fall victim to the guardians own ceaseless attack.

Knowing that she stood no chance in this battle as she currently stood she knew that she would have to take things up a motch, but before the. She wanted to test out at least one of her powerful skills.

As such she activated half a dozen runes all at once. They did not form chains or anything else to attack the monster, no, instead these runes formed a mix of barriers. Whilst at the same time deploying a form of pseudo domain intending to restrict teleportation of any kind.

Not that she expected to be able to fully block the guardian from teleporting, no, she simply desired to halt its movements for long enough for her to land her attack.

Her throat glowed a brilliant purple as power rapidly built up within her body. Then the world flashed purple, only the aires immediately around the guardian retaining its true coloured as the illumination of the void was refused dominion over the guardians claimed space.

Whilst her runic formation was quite limited and never designed to fully halt the creatures movements, it did felt it enough for the dragon breath to wash over it.

Or at least it would have done so had a powerful wall of roots not shot uo from the ground to interpose itself between the dragon and guardian.

The root wall did not fully block the breath, yet it did its job and managed to hold off well over half of the attacks potency.

That remaining half did however, impact the guardian.

A screech resounded from the guardians position, its form remaining somewhat hidden behind the roiling and crackling power of the void that lingered after the strike.

Shortly after however, Violet saw that whilst the guardian was most definitely injured from her near all out attack. It was by no means crippled, only the outer layer of writhing vines and roots had been eradicated.

Sure it was a large wound, yet not even severe injuries were enough to put this guardian out of commission.

Only by destroying the core could it be defeated, then Violet wondered if all of the cores it had absorbed into the original tier 5 gurdians core, or if they were instead scattered throughout the creatures body.

Violet assumed she would just have to find out during the battle.