Chương 19: Struggles on the Rift

The wind howled over the frozen landscape. Two armies stood across from each other, split by a jagged ravine. Ophelia wondered what the Duke of the North's plan was. Surely his urgent request for her wasn't to act as an emergency audience. And although she felt a bit nervous, she did want to use her powerful Archmage abilities. That was the main reason she had come tonight.

"You can't win, King of Beasts," murmured Dietfried, taking out a new cigar from his cloak pocket, placing it between his lips and lighting it with a lighter.

"For years, I've merely been toying with you. You couldn't even force me to raise the banners of my true northern army." He puffed on the cigar.

"Just give up and go home." The Beast King's yellowish eyes gleamed with fury. Then, a wide, sharp grin cut across his face, a booming laugh erupting from his chest.

"Finally! And I was starting to think this tiny planet of ours held no worthy opponents!" He prowled forward like a mountain lion until he could curl his clawed toes around the edge of the rift.

"That little trick you just pulled looks like your Level 1000 capstone ability. Your power lies in wide-scale attacks, hmmm? Good to know. You're probably much weaker one on one."

"Many of my enemies have assumed that," said Dietfried.

"Many of my enemies no longer walk this earth." The Beast King snickered. Then he pointed his jaw towards Ophelia.

"And who is this? Your fangirl?" Ophelia's fists clenched. She wasn't a fan. She was the one with fans! She rose into the air slowly, the hem of her battle robes fluttering slightly. She glared down her nose at the Beast King. Then, she stopped suppressing her class and level. [Archmage - Level 1000] The nameplate bloomed like a beautiful blue flower above her head. The beating of the war drums faltered. Breaths were sucked in. The Beast King's eyes widened in absolute shock.

"The Sovereigness of the Seam. But you just figured that out, didn't you," said Dietfried, chuckling coldly.

"I brought her along so I could get a quick trip home after this, but if you insist on continuing this idiocy, I'm sure she wouldn't mind casting a few spells to make my life easier." Had Lady Vyx let the Duke of the North peacock this much? How could she stand it? Ophelia's feathers were getting ruffled. Even if the duke was just trying to intimidate the Beast King, to say that he had only brought her along to act as his taxi…

"You aren't the only one who brought a spatial mage!" choked out the Beast King. The duke snorted.

"Are you referring to that dot in the distance?" Indeed, there seemed to be a mage racing away in the opposite direction from the battlefield at maximum speed. He seemed too afraid to even use spatial abilities like [Warp] to escape while Lady Vyx was around.

"You aren't strong enough to defeat me, let alone when I have the best spatial mage in the world on my side." Dietfried puffed on his cigar again.

"Retreat. Go back to your old-school guerilla attacks on the border - you and your ragtag horde can't defeat me on an open battlefield." Ophelia's mind spun as she tried to decipher the duke's intentions. She imagined a king cobra flaring its hood to scare enemies from even thinking of attacking, because even winning cost energy and resources.

As for the duke's ability, [Call of Duty] ™, releasing a bunch of subpar copies of the original looked extremely impressive, but with each copy that was defeated, damage blew back onto the Spellblade. The cost was high. The duke had mentioned not wanting enemy blood to be shed. Why was he trying to stop this battle from happening? Did he want to preserve the enemy forces for some reason? Well, the duke was a good guy™. The Beast King laughed lowly.

"You think I care if these insects all die? I subjugated them. They are worthless," he said.

"They should be grateful to die in battle for me - then their tiny lives might finally have meaning." The Beast King's grin widened and widened, his teeth sharpening." [Blood Frenzy]!" With a deafening roar, the man's skin exploded - his muscles ballooned, his bones lengthened, and he grew over twenty feet tall in an instant. White fur sprouted all over his broad body, obsidian spikes growing down his neck and along the ridge of his spine.

He had become half-man, half-polar bear, a towering giant in front of the ravine. His eyes were an animal yellow, all humanity gone, replaced only by predatory rage.

Ophelia watched the transformation in mild horror, eyes lingering on the blood and stringy viscera pooled around his feet. Transformation sequences were much less grotesque and smelly when it was just two panels in a webtoon. A wisp of smoke curled in front of the duke's face.

"Why do I bother giving out advice? No one ever listens."

"You should start a paid course," Ophelia said automatically.

"People don't value anything given for free." The man's lips stretched into a small smile around his cigar.

"Dietfried University." Ophelia couldn't think of a less marketable name.

"Doesn't quite have a ring to it. What about Duke University?"

"Nah. Too generic." With an answering roar, the duke's army of clones began running forward toward the ravine, their weapons raised. Ophelia wondered what trick the duke was going to pull out of his hat now. The majority of his army were grunts below Level 200. They couldn't possibly jump the rift. She watched as the tide of the army - generals and all - fully sprinted over the ravine and began to fall into the darkness. The duke's icy gaze slid towards her.

"Vyx?" Oh. Wait. Did he expect her to do something? Sorry, I'm not Lady Vyx with hundreds of years of experience as a support! I'm new to this! Ophelia threw out her hands in a panic. [Compress]. The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. In a flash, as abrupt as the covers of an open book snapping shut, the space between both sides of the rift compressed and the army landed on the other side as if it didn't exist. They were all across in but a moment.

She released the spell. The rift unzipped, folded open again. The Beast King didn't need such help from a spatial mage. The muscles of his legs bunched together, then released like a string of a bow. He launched into the air, arcing like a ballistic missile, before landing on their side. Boom. The icy ground cratered around him, ripples of ice extending outward from his feet.

"Vyx!" the duke shouted.

"Now!"

"Now what?" she asked, aggrieved.

"[Expand]!" he called out. He wanted her to stretch out the ravine since his army had crossed it? Maybe to contain the Beast King's horde to one side? Away from Snowreach? Ophelia rose higher into the air to get as far away from the huffing and puffing polar bear monstrosity as possible. She cast [Expand] and the ravine yawned wider - so wide even the Beast King might not be able to jump back over. She surveyed the battlefield from her position up high.

The Duke of the North dashed forward, body parallel to the ground, cigar still dangling from his lip. The Beast King's white-furred muscles rippled and he charged on all fours. Snow and ice exploded around their clash. An ice blue sword struck against razor sharp obsidian claws. Ribbons of green and purple auroras danced gently in the night sky. In the darkness, a whirlwind of icy blue arcs of swordlight lit up the darkness, first one then another, almost too fast to see.

Cyan gouges ripped across the snow beneath the two powerhouses. Brands from his spell strikes. In the distance, Dietfried's army wasn't attacking the beast horde so much as restraining them. The armoured warriors bashed through the beastmen, sometimes breaking legs to keep enemy combatants down, but never killing. The horde had no such sense of mercy. They ruthlessly slaughtered the clones whenever possible. Ophelia saw a mammoth twice as tall as the Beast King stomp madly on a group of warriors. [Warp].

The great beast popped out of existence. Where it had stood, the snow had been crushed to solid, clear ice. A number of beastmen looked around, stunned. A faint trumpeting noise sounded from the bottom of the rift, echoing as it bounced off the rocky walls. Ophelia smirked.

"Vyx!" snarled the duke.

"What?"

"My army!" What about his army? They were doing what armies did - fight. Ophelia began to [Warp] swathes of beastmen to the bottom of the ravine, joining their mammoth friend. When one of the duke's general-tier clones, a [Lancer - Level 900], was flung into the air, she warped him back down. I should practice my other spells too. I'm too comfortable with [Warp], thought Ophelia. Maybe she should use her Level 1000 capstone ability too? Ophelia threw out her arms, blinding white threads racing around her fingers.

[Create Spatial Realm]! The threads exploded outwards like a massive net, growing in size. A sphere the size of a blimp began stitching together in front of her, the threads weaving and dancing together into a metaphysical form. Before the threads could solidify into walls, Ophelia dropped the nascent spatial realm into the center of the beastmen horde. Screams of shock sounded. Every beastman and monster within the boundary of her spatial realm simply vanished into nothingness.

The spatial realm coalesced properly, blurring for a moment before becoming invisible. A few beastmen tried to swing their weapons through the spatial realm, but their bodies tilted from the momentum as their weapons simply passed through it. Ophelia laughed. Creating a spatial realm was awesome, but the mana cost was pretty high. For one that size, she had used about ten percent of her mana. She'd have to rest for a few minutes to recover it.

"Vyx!" Her laughter abruptly stopped. What was this guy's issue? If he wanted her to do something specific, he should've just told her at the start instead of yelling her name all the time.

"What?" she called back. Again. She saw in real time as the duke's sword slashed through the Beast King's arm, red blood steaming hotly into the night. In a fraction of a second the Beast King healed fully, the magic of the duke's blade having no effect.

"The Beast King is about to use [Primal Wrath] - I need your [Aegis of Slowing] otherwise we're finished!" Ophelia quickly cast the spell over the duke. Just in time as well. The Beast King suddenly exploded in power, his claws raking viciously over the duke too fast to see. The attacks were so sharp that Vyx felt a stinging on her face. She cast another barrier over herself as well, just to be sure, and also drifted further away from them. Unfortunately, that wasn't the last of Dietfried's requests.

"Vyx! How could you let his attack go through?"

"Vyx! Please, this isn't our first Berserker. Or even our tenth– what was that you just cast–""Vyx! There is no way- you have to be doing this on purpose! One shield, just this once, I beg." One command after another - a barrier here, a charm here, a buff there.

"Hello? Vyx?"

"WHAT?" Ophelia screamed. She'd cast dozens of spells now, all of them of the highest quality. How was it not good enough for the duke? She'd used almost 1% of her mana! This was unheard of for non-spatial spells! She'd never been bullied like this in her entire life - even when she'd done that gambling sponsorship!

"I expected better from you on the rift," said the duke resignedly.

"Do I have to start calling out the codes, again? Enact Battleplan 69." Ophelia couldn't believe she'd ever thought Ravenfall was a woman. Only a man could create a creature like Dietfried. The duke didn't wait for her response. He couldn't afford to. The Beast King charged at him, his massive black hole of a maw biting down toward his head.

"Beast King. Haven't you learned yet that cold calculation beats the fires of fury any day? Behold my Spatial Frost Scythe!" A regular white-blue [Frost Scythe] arced from his sword, missing the dodging Beast King by a hair. DOES THIS MEATHEAD EXPECT ME TO READ HIS MIND?!? I'M THE SPATIAL MAGE, NOT YOU, WHY ARE YOU VOLUNTEERING MY ABILITIES INTO YOUR COMBO ATTACK!? Ophelia cast [Warp]. The [Frost Scythe] disappeared in a flash, reappearing behind the Beast King's throat.

The man's yellowish eyes widened comically, his neck bowing forward, blood splashing out of his mouth with a meaty gurgle. In an instant, the Berserker's flesh healed back to normal. Steam hissed from his black snout, the man more incensed than ever. Ophelia suddenly had an idea. If the duke was a bit faster, maybe he could out-damage the Beast King's healing factor! She cast [Acceleration] over the man. The duke's eyes snapped to her.

"What the hell? There is no way you're casting that now. I thought you'd given me that at the start– do you know how many attacks I've missed?! If I were a bystander I would never believe that we were once rated the most dangerous duo in all of Requieos!" She had the sudden urge to take off her battle robes and run down the middle of the battlefield into enemy spellfire. No wonder this guy got no screen-time. Whenever any of the heroes needed help they never asked him - even if they were on death's door.

Now she knew why. Because he was fucking insufferable. Her fingers twitched. Ophelia reached behind her and pulled her Shears of the Heavenly Garden out of the case. The sharp blades gleamed green and purple beneath the auroras. The weight felt satisfying in her grasp. Right. Forget the duke. Forget being a support. She was going to kill the Beast King herself!