Novel Full Chapter 513 - Taming Fragments - 2
Chapter 513: Chapter 513 – Taming Fragments – 2
The advance of the ground forces toward Yino’s castle had been surprisingly smooth.
Despite not being able to fly like the King and his aerial vanguard, the increases to their physical capabilities meant the vast majority were faster than common three-horned horses.
Selphira had established a relentless pace, her serpent gliding over the terrain as if it were liquid.
Others like her rode directly on their beasts: Leonel on his own serpent kept his head low just behind his mother, several minor nobles also mounted on creatures or simply running with superhuman speed.
“Maintain formation!” Selphira shouted as they approached the castle’s outer walls. “We don’t know what kind of…”
She stopped abruptly upon realizing the castle gates were wide open.
The sight was unexpected… unsettling.
“A trap?” Leonel murmured, instinctively positioning himself behind her.
“No,” Selphira responded after a moment of analysis, “rather a preselection of the battlefield terrain.”
Her mind was already working through the possibilities. An enemy that chose to fight inside rather than at the walls was not confident in their numbers but maybe their quality.
The castle had even less resistance than expected. In fact, there was none in the first rooms.
The workers they found in the main hallways surrendered instantly: cleaning staff, cooks, minor administrators, all the people dedicated to maintaining the castle’s basic functions.
They threw themselves to the ground with hands raised, clearly terrified.
“Please!” begged an older woman, the kitchen administrator. “We didn’t choose this! We just work here!”
Selphira stopped, studying the faces surrounding her.
These people posed no threat, and harming them would serve no purpose while only damaging their own honor.
“They’re not combatants,” she observed. “We leave the civilians out of this.”
She left a small contingent to secure the civilians and continued with the bulk of her forces advancing deeper into the castle.
It wasn’t until they reached the narrower hallways, those that necessarily led toward the castle’s depths, that they found the true resistance.
The first sextuple appeared without warning.
A man who had been tall and elegant, but was now a grotesque fusion of six beasts that had transformed him into something barely recognizable as human.
His arms had elongated until they became muscular tentacles ending in claws, while his torso was covered by an exoskeleton that pulsed with purple energy.
“Welcome,” he said with a voice that resonated with weird harmonics, “to your grave.”
But Selphira wasted no time on words.
Her black turtle manifested completely, creating an armor of crystallized water that covered her entire body while launching a torrent of pure pressurized water toward the enemy.
The sextuple dodged with grace that defied its grotesque appearance, its tentacles propelling it along the corridor walls as if gravity were optional.
Following him they reached the blockade where more sextuples waited.
“They have a good tunnel formation!” Selphira shouted, immediately recognizing the problem they faced.
The narrow hallways severely limited their maneuvering options.
Normally, their numerical advantage would have been decisive: several dozen gold-rank doubles, each with the advanced fusion capability Ren had unlocked, against few enemies.
But in such a reduced space, only the first three or four combatants could participate effectively, while the rest were forced to wait their turn.
The sextuple laughed, a sound that echoed strangely in the narrow corridor.
“How adorable,” he mocked. “They think they can use normal tactics against us.”
Selphira could face a sextuple with full Gold Rank beasts now that Ren had unlocked her more advanced fusion, but it wasn’t going to be an easy battle…
Nine more figures emerged from the corridor’s shadows, each as grotesquely transformed as the first.
Ten sextuples in total, each one a true challenge even for combatants of Selphira’s caliber.
“Damn!” Leonel muttered. “How are we supposed to fight ten of these in this space?”
The corridor that had been designed as a funnel now worked completely in the enemy’s favor.
Yino’s Earth specialist corrupteds had chosen this confrontation point near the crystal chamber door specifically for the advantages it offered. Every aspect of the terrain worked against the invaders.
Sirius appeared from the shadows next to Selphira then, ready to support her in breaking the blockade.
♢♢♢♢
In the battlefield of 200 thousand transformed beasts where Dragarion had broken the first crystal…
The corruption continued swirling with the beasts’ movement, a purple mass of nightmare that sank into the ground like living oil.
The visual was hypnotic… an ocean of transformed flesh that moved with collective purpose.
But the sextuples in the air, now transformed into increasingly large and grotesque beasts, weren’t escaping… On the contrary, they continued attacking with growing ferocity.
Their assault was relentless, purposeful. This side wasn’t going to retreat yet; they were maintaining pressure while the real objective played out below.
Dragarion looked up to observe a battle that belonged more to nightmares than reality.
Victor’s winged Qilin fought alongside him as an armor and a manifested copy, its enormous golden wings creating brilliant contrast against the blackened sky.
The fusion of both creatures helped by their merged tamer directed their attack against what had been Ravenspire, now transformed into a giant crow that looked like a cloud of living darkness.
“Maintain formation!” Victor shouted, dodging a tentacle that would have absorbed his energy. “Don’t let it separate us!”
These weren’t battles that could be won through conventional tactics… They were exercises in survival against forces that transcended their normal understanding of beasts.
Zhao and other members of Victor’s flight squadron carrying the new doubles tried to control something just as bad: the gigantic vampiric bat that had emerged from the fusion of Bloodwyn multiple beasts.
But calling it a bat was speaking in abstraction. It was rather an enormous sphere with mouth and wings, a horrible bloody mass that pulsed with abyssal life.
“They’re too big!” one of the tamers shouted, his flying beast struggling to stay airborne. “We can’t contain them!”
The scale difference was overwhelming. Their enhanced abilities, which had seemed so impressive against normal opponents, felt inadequate against creatures that operated on those monstrous scales.
Zhao maneuvered his beast with desperate skill, trying to find a vulnerable point in the pulsing mass.
But each time he attacked, the creature simply absorbed the damage.