Chapter 472: Battle Of Greyfen [ 3 ]

Sage stopped above the Basilisk and extended both arms.

Two crimson Magic Circles appeared, then four and then eight, each was dozens of feet across.

"Fire Magic: Eight Suns of Calamity!"

Eight miniature suns ignited around him.

The Stormcrown Basilisk looked upward.

Sage lowered his hands.

The suns fell.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Each explosion transformed the valley. Forest became fire. Stone became molten rivers.

Entire sections of the ridge collapsed beneath repeated impacts as the Commander Beast charged through the bombardment, refusing to fall. Its storm mana surged outward and formed an electrical shell around its body that detonated two of the descending suns before they struck.

Sage’s expression sharpened.

The Basilisk was adapting.

Below, Iris suddenly shouted, "Everyone jump!"

A blue Magic Circle almost a hundred feet across appeared beneath the battlefield.

"Water Magic: Leviathan’s Floodplain!"

Water erupted from the earth.

Thousands of gallons surged through Iris’s prepared trenches, sweeping several Elite Beasts from their feet while leaving narrow elevated paths exactly where Rowan, Mina and Lucan stood.

The water curled around Iris in enormous spirals before she brought both hands together.

"Water Magic: Abyssal Dragon’s Coil!"

The flood rose. Three gigantic serpents formed from compressed water and crashed into thegrouped Magic Beasts.

BOOOOOOM!

One crystalline ape was smashed through a tree. Two raptors were dragged from the air. The horned tortoises tried anchoring themselves, but Iris immediately changed elements. Brown replaced blue as three huge Earth Magic Circles appeared beneath their feet.

"Earth Magic: Imperial Faultbreaker!"

The ground split.

A fissure opened beneath the tortoises and swallowed them halfway before stone slammed inward around their limbs.

Lucan grinned despite the blood running from his forehead. "Iris, remind me never to annoy you!"

Iris maintained both spells while glaring toward him. "Lucan, if you have enough breath to flirt with death, use it to kill the thing behind you!"Lucan turned.

A mantis-like creature with four scythes descended.

His smile vanished. "Sword Skill: Auremont Sevenfold Star!"

Seven golden sword lights flashed.

SHING! SHING! SHING!

The creature’s first two scythes fell. Lucan stepped between the remaining pair, turned his blade and drove it through the monster’s chest.

Twenty-three Elite Beasts were dead.

More remained. Mina stood in the center of them. Her golden mana had become brighter.

Three creatures attacked her simultaneously: a crystalline ape from the front, an armored rhinoceros-like beast from the right and a gigantic beetle from behind. Rowan shouted a warning, but Mina didn’t retreat. She planted her shield against the ground.

"Knight Skill: Golden Citadel!"

Golden mana erupted outward.

BOOM!

A hemispherical barrier formed around Mina at the instant all three beasts struck. The impact cratered the earth beneath her and sent fractures racing hundreds of feet across the battlefield. The barrier flickered.

Mina’s boots sank into the ground. She grinned and then she pushed. The golden barrier expanded violently. The three 4th Order Elite Beasts were thrown backward.

Mina went after the largest. Golden mana concentrated around herright arm until even Sage noticed it from above. The density was wrong for a normal 4-Star Master Knight.

Mana wasn’t leaking from Mina’s body despite the absurd amount she was circulating. Every current followed her muscles with increasingly instinctive precision, reinforcing bone, tendon and flesh exactly when required.

Mina jumped. The crystalline ape raised both arms and punched it.

"Knight Skill: Golden Heavenbreaker!"

BANG!

The ape’s chest collapsed. The shockwave exited through its back and blew apart every tree behind it for nearly a hundred feet.

The thirty-foot Elite Beast flew across the battlefield, smashed through a stone formation and disappeared into the forest.

Sage’s eyes widened. For half a second, even the Stormcrown Basilisk ceased to matter.

Mina landed inside a crater with golden mana roaring around her small body like a livingflame.

Lightning interrupted him.

KRA-KOOOOOOOM!

The Stormcrown Basilisk struck Sage directly.

Or tried to.

Sage crossed his legs. The Wind Magic Circle completed beneath both shoes.

BOOM!

He disappeared an instant before the lightning swallowed the sky.

The Basilisk had reached its limit.

Its seven horns began drawing storm mana from the surrounding atmosphere while the crystalline growths across its body illuminated one after another. Clouds finally began forming overhead, dragged into existence by the creature’s power.

Thunder rolled continuously across Greyfen as lightning connected the Basilisk to the growing storm.

Rowan looked upward and immediately shouted, "Guildmaster! The crystals on its chest are feeding the crown! Break the chest first!"

Sage heard him.

"Iris!" Sage shouted while completing another Wind Circle and launching himself over the battlefield. "Give me three seconds!"

Iris looked at the Commander Beast and understood what he wanted.

She abandoned the remaining minions to Rowan, Mina and Lucan and thrust both palms toward the Basilisk.

Two brown Magic Circles appeared, then four, then six, each was enormous.

"Earth Magic: Chains of the Buried Colossus!"

The ground erupted. Massive stone chains wrapped around the Basilisk’s legs, torso and neck. The creature roared and shattered the first, but Iris clenched her hands together as more emerged.

"One!" Iris screamed through clenched teeth.

The Basilisk broke another chain.

"Two!"

Sage raised both hands. Fire gathered above him. Nature Magic Circles simultaneously appeared beneath the Basilisk.

"Nature Magic: Worldtree Crucifixion!"

Gigantic roots erupted beneath the Commander Beast and wrapped around its torso, reinforcing Iris’s chains.

"THREE!"

Sage’s mana exploded. A crimson Magic Circle appeared above Greyfen.

It expanded beyond the battlefield, beyond the ridge and beyond the trees.

The formation became so enormous that everyone below stood beneath its burning runes.

Iris stared upward in disbelief.

Sage lowered one hand.

"Fire Magic: Heavenfall Solar Cataclysm."

The world turned gold. A sun descended.

The Stormcrown Basilisk roared and unleashed everything it had.

Lightning rose and fire fell.They collided.

BOOOOM!

The explosion erased the ridge. The shockwave flattened trees across hundredsof feet. Iris reinforced the ground beneath the others while Mina threw herself in front of Lucan and Rowan, her golden barrier taking the worst of the blast.

The sky disappeared beneath fire and lightning as the two powers fought for several seconds before Sage’s spell finally broke through.

The artificial sun struck the Basilisk. The valley vanished beneath golden fire.

When the flames cleared, an enormous crater stretched across northern Greyfen. The surviving Elite Beasts were fleeing. The Stormcrown Basilisk remained alive at the center, but its crystalline crown had shattered and its chest armor had been torn open.

Sage landed beside the others with a final BOOM from his Wind Magic Circles.

He pointed toward the exposed chest.

"Finish it together!"

Rowan moved first.

"Hunter Skill: Ghosttrail Pursuit!"

He disappeared.

Lucan followed. "Sword Skill: Auremont Falling Star!"

Golden light crossed the crater.

Iris raised both hands. "Earth Magic: Titan’s Execution Platform!"

Stone erupted beneath the Basilisk’s head and forced its exposed chest upward.

Mina charged through the middle.

Golden mana engulfed her completely.Rowan appeared beneath the Basilisk and severed the damaged tendon holding its chest upright. Lucan arrived a heartbeat later and drove his sword through the opening between two shattered scales.

Iris compressed the stone beneath them and prevented the Commander Beast from twisting away.

Mina jumped. For several seconds she rose above the Basilisk’s enormous head, golden mana concentrating around her shield until the weapon looked like a fragment of the sun.

Sage watched her.

Mina roared.

"KNIGHT SKILL: GOLDEN HEAVENBREAKER!"

Shedescended.

BAANG!

The shield struck the Basilisk’s exposed chest, the armor collapsed and the stone disappeared beneath the impact.

A circular shockwave ripped across the crater and tore the remaining leaves from trees hundreds of feet away. The Basilisk’s hundred-foot body slammed into the earth as the force penetrated its chest and ruptured everything beneath.

The Stormcrown Basilisk convulsed once.

Then stopped.

Silence gradually returned to Greyfen.

More than fifty 4th Order Elite Beasts lay scattered across a battlefield that barely resembled a forest anymore. Craters covered the earth.

Entire sections of woodland had been flattened. Rivers of molten stone cooled beside Iris’s artificial ravines. Broken roots the size of towers lay among shattered cliffs, and the ridge where the Stormcrown Basilisk had first appeared no longer existed.

Mina stood on the dead Commander Beast’s chest, golden mana slowly fading from around her body as she struggled to catch her breath.

Lucan leaned against his sword nearby, battered and bloodied but still standing, while Rowan surveyed the fleeing survivors and decided none were worth pursuing. Iris lowered trembling hands as the final enormous Magic Circle behind her dissolved into drifting particles.

Sage looked at all four of them.

Rowan had turned chaos into information. Iris had transformed the battlefield itself into theirweapon.

Lucan had thrown himself into every opening without hesitating regardless of the danger. Mina had stood in the middle of dozens of Elite Beasts and somehow become more terrifying the longer the battle continued.

And Sage had commanded them while fighting the strongest creature himself.

Weeks ago, these people had barely known one another. Now more than fifty 4th Order Elite Beasts and a 5th Order Commander Beast lay dead around them.

Sage’s attention eventually returned to Mina. He had seen talented Knights before. He had met powerful Warriors and understood what separated ordinary talent from genius. But what Mina had demonstrated wasn’t simply unusual strength.

Her mana reinforcement was evolvingat a speed that made conventional expectations increasingly meaningless.

At eleven years old and still only a 4-Star Master Knight, she had already begun producing moments of physical power that forced even Sage to reconsider what her eventual limits might look like.

Mina noticed him staring and wiped blood from her cheek before giving him a tired grin. "What is it, Uncle Sage? Why are you looking at me like that?"

Sage glanced toward the dead Stormcrown Basilisk beneath her feet before looking back at the small girl standing on its chest.

His expression became strange for a moment before he finally answered, "I’m trying to decide whether I should be proud of you or terrified of what you’ll be like when you grow up."

Mina’s exhausted grin immediately became smug.Lucan groaned as he leaned moreheavily against his sword. "Please don’t encourage her, Guildmaster. Some of us have to survive travelling with her."

Rowan wiped his blade clean and glanced toward Mina before answering Lucan with the faintest trace of amusement. "You survived today. Consider that progress."

Iris laughed quietly despite her exhaustion, but Sage’s gaze moved beyond them toward the devastated northern wilderness. Beneath the ruined battlefield, invisible to everyone except him, mana continued flowing toward the unborn dungeon.

Killing the Stormcrown Basilisk hadn’t stopped the phenomenon.

It had only removed the creature standing above it.

Greyfen was theirs to investigate now .And somewhere beneath their feet, the dungeon continued to grow.