Chapter 450: Is It Enough...?

Before they could analyze the monstrosity any further, the sounds of snapping branches and guttural snarls erupted from all sides.

Surging out from the deadwood trees ahead of the cocoon came a fresh horrific amount of monsters... dozens of mutated forest goblins, razor-beaked swamp raptors, and venomous rock lizards, all bearing the same three-foot purple parasites bursting from their skulls!

And behind them, charging up the ravine path, the remaining thirty infected Umbral Wolves arrived, sealing their escape route entirely.

"We’re surrounded," Reina said, her voice dropping into a disciplined tone as she leveled her twin-pointed spear.

Vala didn’t waste breath on words. She raised her blade, channeling a massive sphere of concentrated fire mana to the tip.

"Ignis Lance!"

BOOOOOOM!

A roaring spear of crimson flame shot from her blade, striking the center of the giant pulsating cocoon dead-center.

KRA-SHAAAA!

The fiery explosion blasted green mucus and superheated steam thirty feet into the air.

But as the smoke cleared, both women gasped.

The thick rubbery membrane of the cocoon had barely suffered a surface scorch.

The thousands of glowing purple veins had instantly rerouted psychic mana to absorb and disperse the shockwave, leaving the structure completely intact.

Vala clicked her tongue in frustration, leaning forward over Reina’s shoulder.

"The outer shell has an adaptive mana-dispersion barrier! Reina, do you have a way to crack this overgrown boil?!"

Reina’s eyes narrowed sharply as she analyzed the rhythmic pulsing of the membrane.

"I don’t have enough raw physical output to pierce that barrier with my spear," Reina admitted quickly, her voice steady under pressure. "However... that cocoon isn’t the creature’s true body! It’s a gestation shell protecting the core entity nested inside! If I channel the full unbridled power of Beast Arrest, I might be able to overload its psychic frequency and force the shell to fracture from within!"

"How long do you need?" Vala asked.

"Ten seconds of completely uninterrupted focus!" Reina answered. "If I get interrupted by a single stray beast, the psychic backlash will scramble my brain!"

Vala’s lips curved into a sharp fearless smirk.

"Ten seconds?" Vala whispered.

SWOOSH!

With a graceful, effortless vault, Vala leaped down from Luna’s back, landing lightly on the mossy gravel between Reina and the advancing swarm.

"I’ll give you twenty," Vala declared, her voice ringing with confidence. "Begin your skill. Not a single drop of monster blood will touch your saddle..."

Reina nodded firmly, closing her eyes and pulling Luna five paces back to begin gathering her spiritual reserves.

Vala stood alone in the center of the amphitheater, surrounded on all sides by over fifty mutated beasts.

She rolled her shoulders, letting the cold mountain wind whip through her dark hair.

Vala raised her void-iron blade, looking directly into the bloodshot, worm-infested eyes of the oncoming monsters with a battle-hungry smile.

"Come at me, you ugly vermin," Vala whispered, her voice dripping with provocation. "Give me a good match. Carve away my weaknesses and make me strong enough to stand proudly as my Lord’s wife!"

"GRAAAAAAH!"

A massive eight-foot swamp raptor lunged first, its sickle-claws tearing through the air toward Vala’s neck.

VUUUUUM!

Vala didn’t retreat. She channeled pure emerald Wind Mana through the soles of her boots.

BOOM!

With a concussive blast of compressed air, Vala shot vertically into the sky like an arrow, soaring twenty feet into the air as the raptor’s claws slammed harmlessly into empty dirt.

"Zephyr Edge!" Vala called out from above.

SHING-SHING-SHING!

Descending through the air with fluid acrobatic grace, Vala unleashed a flurry of crescent wind blades.

The razor-sharp aerial strikes cleaved through the raptor’s neck, spine, and legs simultaneously, reducing the charging beast into four neat cauterized segments before she even touched the ground.

SPLAT-THUD.

To her left, three mutated goblins brandishing rusted bone daggers shrieked, lunging toward Luna’s flank to disrupt Reina’s concentration.

"Not on my watch!" Reina’s eyes snapped open for a fraction of a second.

THWACK!

Reina’s twin-pointed spear blurred forward like a striking viper, skewering the central goblin through its chest and lifting it three feet off the ground before slamming it into the dirt.

Simultaneously, Luna’s massive hind legs kicked backward with devastating equine force.

CRUNCH!

The second goblin’s skull caved inward like a hollow gourd, its crushed body skipping across the gravel like a thrown pebble.

FWHIP!

Before the third goblin could scramble away, a concentrated blade of wind sliced down from above, severing its head cleanly from its shoulders. Vala landed lightly on her boots, spinning her sword in a tight, defensive arc.

SCREEEEEECH!

A deafening high-pitched screech tore through the sky above.

Dropping from the high obsidian cliffs at terrifying dive-bomb speed was a winged monstrosity... a Gargoyle-Bat Aberration spanning fifteen feet wide, its grotesque jaws dripping with caustic purple bile as its hooked talons reached out to crush Vala’s skull.

Vala didn’t even look up until the beast was barely ten feet above her head.

’Too slow,’ Vala thought calmly. She thrust her left palm straight toward the descending shadow.

CRACKLE... BOOOOOOM!

A blinding spear of concentrated Lightning Mana erupted from her hand, striking the flying beast dead-center in its chest.

The high-voltage electrical discharge instantly vaporized the winged monster’s internal organs, frying the purple parasite in its skull into smoking cinders before the charred carcass crashed into the dirt with a heavy sizzling thud.

VUUUUUUM... CHIME!

Once again, that intoxicating warm surge of feedback flooded through Vala’s spiritual meridians.

’Another surge...’ Vala grinned fiercely, feeling her physical strength, speed, and mana recovery rate elevate yet again. ’I’m leveling up in real-time!’

She gripped her sword with both hands, stepping into the absolute center of the remaining wolf pack.

"Let’s raise the heat!"

FWOOOOOOOOOOSH!

This time, she unleashed her third awakened element... Crimson Fire as her blade transformed into a pillar of roaring superheated flame.

Vala moved like a dancing executioner, her fiery sword cleaving through wolves, raptors, and rock lizards in a relentless breathtaking sequence of spinning slashes, thrusts, and point-blank flame bursts.

SLASH! HACK! BOOM! SPLAT!

"DIE!"

"BURN!"

Every swing left a trail of smoldering cauterized monster corpses in its wake.

In less than eight seconds, Vala had slaughtered over thirty mutated monstrosities on her own, forming an impenetrable wall of fire and steel around Reina.

As the last infected wolf collapsed into a burning heap, Vala looked over her shoulder toward the massive pulsating cocoon.

The purple veins on the membrane were glowing with blinding intensity, preparing to release a massive psychic shockwave.

"REINA! HURRY! BREAK THE DAMN SHELL!" Vala roared at the top of her lungs.

"ALREADY ON IT!" Reina screamed back.

Reina stood tall in Luna’s stirrups, her braided ash-blonde hair floating wildly as an overwhelming ocean of golden spiritual mana erupted from her soul core.

She pointed both palms directly at the giant pulsating cocoon.

"Beast..."

Reina took a deep breath.

"...Arrest."

VUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM!

A visible beam of solid golden soul-force shot from Reina’s hands, slamming violently into the center of the giant cocoon!

SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!

Inside the translucent membrane, a deafening psychic screech reverberated directly into the fabric of the atmosphere as a brutal invisible battle of wills erupted between Reina’s awakened soul-force and the alien consciousness nesting within the cocoon.

The creature possessed an astonishing degree of mental resilience... it fought back frantically, projecting violent psychic needles into Reina’s mind that made blood trickle from her left nostril.

’Fuck... Fuck... Fuck...’

Even while locked in mental combat, the entity desperately commanded three remaining wounded wolves to drag themselves toward Reina’s mount.

SHING!

Vala blurred past, her blade flashing once in a clean horizontal cleave that decapitated all three wolves before they could take another step.

"I’ve got your back, Reina!" Vala yelled, her boots planted firmly in the bloodstained loam. "SHATTER IT!"

"BREAK FOR ME, YOU DISGUSTING FREAK!" Reina roared, pouring every single drop of her spiritual mana and her devotion to Silas into the golden beam.

KRRRR-SHATTER!

The mental barrier snapped.

With the deafening sound of fracturing crystal, the giant twenty-foot cocoon violently ruptured down the center.

The thick, rubbery membrane tore open like peeling fruit, spewing gallons of steaming green mucus and bile across the ground, exposing the grotesque, vulnerable core entity curled inside.

The creature was a bloated six-foot-tall pale-white maggot-queen covered in dozens of pulsating crimson eyes and writhing tentacles.

"VALA! NOW! THE CORE IS EXPOSED!" Reina gasped as she fell back into the saddle, breathless and exhausted.

Vala didn’t need to be told twice.

BOOM!

Vala detonated the earth beneath her boots, shooting across the clearing like a blazing meteor.

She channeled the entirety of her remaining fire mana into her blade, the steel glowing with blinding fury that illuminated the entire amphitheater.

"Just die already!"

SLASH!

Vala brought her blazing blade down in a flawless two-handed vertical execution cleave straight through the maggot-queen’s exposed cranial core.

KRA-BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The white-hot flame sheared through flesh, organs, and nerve clusters, detonating the core entity from within in a colossal geyser of superheated fire and boiling ash.

SKREEEEEEEE—

The queen’s death screech choked off into silence and the moment the master entity perished, the resonance linking the hive mind violently ruptured.

SPLAT! POP! SQUELCH!

Across the entire amphitheater and the surrounding ravine, every single purple worm embedded in the remaining monster corpses violently detonated like overpressurized blood-sacks.

SHOWER!

A colossal, torrential rain of black blood, sticky mucus, and shredded parasite gristle showered down from the sky, covering everything in the clearing.

Reina, Vala, and Luna were instantly drenched from head to toe in foul-smelling lukewarm black monster gore.

"Uuuuugh..." Reina groaned, wiping a thick clump of black slime from her forehead with a look of soul-deep misery. "I smell like a clogged sewer drain in the middle of summer."

She looked around at the dead Umbral Wolves scattered across the ravine floor, letting out a disappointed sigh.

"Great... now we have to trek into another sector and locate a new wolf pack for the cavalry corps," Reina complained, shaking her head. "I swear, if there’s another hive-mind worm nesting in these mountains, I’m going to set the entire forest on fire."

Vala sheathed her sword with a crisp clack, stepping up beside Luna.

She raised her right hand, her eyes shifting to a tranquil, azure hue as she channeled her fourth awakened element... Water Mana.

"Water, be my guide..." Vala murmured softly.

SPLASH!

A gentle swirling vortex of crystal-clear mountain water erupted from her palm, washing over Reina, Luna, and herself in a soothing, thorough torrent.

In less than three seconds, the foul black gore, mucus, and stench were completely washed away, leaving their skin, hair, and armor immaculately clean and dry.

"Thanks, Vala," Reina smiled, shaking out her wet braids. "Water magic really is the most convenient utility in the world..."

"It has its uses," Vala replied calmly, though her mind was already drifting far away from the bloodstained clearing.

She closed her eyes, letting the cool mountain breeze caress her skin.

’Two level ups in a single skirmish... multiple successful multi-element releases... and the complete eradication of an invasive hive core,’ Vala calculated internally, her heart beating with quiet nervous anticipation. ’This should give me enough feats to stand out...’

Her thoughts drifted back to the sacred memory that she held closest to her heart.

The day Silas had awakened her potential, declaring her to be his personal Hidden Blade... He had pinned her against the cold stone wall of the office, his strong hands holding her shoulders, his gaze burning into hers with unshakeable trust... before leaning down and pressing a warm unforgettable kiss upon her forehead.

Vala’s dark eyelashes fluttered, a deep, burning crimson blush rising from the base of her throat all the way to the tips of her ears.

’Does this warrant a kiss on the lips now?’

[The Camp]

Nearly an hour later, in a vast sun-drenched clearing of soft, velvety black grass situated near the center of the Umbral Basin, the entire expeditionary force of Blessed Land had converged for the scheduled midday respite.

Woven linen mats had been neatly laid out across the lush black turf, creating a wide comfortable encampment surrounded by the secure perimeter of resting Blessed wolves and vigilant scout sentries.

The air was rich and intoxicating, filled with the mouth-watering aromas of freshly roasted wild boar ribs, golden-brown herb-crusted poultry, steaming bowls of buttered tuber stew, and platters of chilled mountain berries that had been prepared by the territory’s Chef.

The recruit maidens from all four squads sat together in lively clusters, laughing, chatting, and happily devouring their generous rations as they eagerly recounted their morning battles.

Yet, despite the abundance of delicious food, a palpable simmering tension hung over the encampment.

Every few seconds, dozens of pairs of eyes... including those of Helen, Sarah, Catelyn, Morrighan, and Lupina would subtly dart toward the largest and most luxurious woven mat resting beneath the shade of a weeping willow tree.

And sitting on a mat, Brida was practically gnawing on the bone of her roasted pork rib in jealous frustration.

"Look at that..." Brida grumbled beneath her breath, her large amber eyes narrowing into intense laser-focused slits. "Just look at her... Shameless. She’s absolutely shameless..."