Chương 21: Battle

—Sara Reece— Sara couldn't comprehend just how much of an effect that her presence could have on Jason, Raul, and Mary. Ground cover, tree trunks, and other matter sucked into the air, compacted, and then lit on fire, turning to molten rock before Jason threw it. It hit the spiders in the distance with such a tumultuous wave of force that Sara and the rest of the Chosen fell to their feet. Jason then flew out of the barrier, sword drawn, using a wind spell to tear through another.

"How are you doing that?" Raul asked, throwing a barrier to block him from a distance.

"How are you doing that?" Jason asked.

"It's her." Raul didn't talk back. He just looked at Sara, who was shearing through spiders with the Rupture spell. Every time she pierced something, she shot swirling mana into it. The spiders blew up like balloons, and their bodies exploded. She was also using an aura shield around her body to prevent the acidic blood from touching her. Despite killing half a dozen spiders, she was pristinely clean.

Sara felt deep exasperation at Raul and Jason's sudden improvements, despite the fact that her face and magic were obscured. Aura shield was Emma's signature move, and rupture wasn't even really magic. Worse, her core was steadily heating. She might have had a great core, but it was unrefined and empty. She hadn't even had a second to fill it. Luckily, the amplification properties of her core were enough to rupture the spiders with minimal input. Real magic would swallow her like a wrung rag.

Yet the worst thing that could happen was Jason and Raul not getting any memories back. In her last life, the entire Hero's Party had three years of battle experience, and Emma, who had ultimate healing skills in addition to a small encyclopedia of spells on hand.

Right now, the battlefield was vastly larger than it was in the cavern, and Jason, who was rushing through the spiders, was only alive because Raul was protecting him from the acidic blood with the Aura Release Barrier, which allowed him to create something akin to an aura barrier around Jason, as long as he only used raw magic to attack. Jason flicked his fingers, and the area exploded in blue flames.

"Don't kill us!" Mary screamed.

"No fire!" Raul seconded.

"We'll have to backtrack!"

"Shut up!" Jason yelled, throwing wind blades that spread the fire in sickles. As the fire spread, the mist disappeared, revealing enough spiders to leave Jason pale. He better be pale, Sara thought. This isn't something we can handle! It really wasn't. She was overclocking. What she needed was real magic! Ten minutes later, when Jason was sweating and rugged, and Raul was sitting on the ground, meditating to keep the barriers active, Sara made a decision as she looked across the fire-blazed battlefield.

A football field-length area was open and filled with spiders. There were silhouettes in the background, proving that there was a long way to go. Sara screamed, gritted her teeth, and thought, I'll use something they couldn't even dream of. E parádeisos kai adis, édoni kai odýni, she chanted. The blood of all the soldiers and spiders lifted off the ground slowly, moving upward in reverse waterfalls. Synántoun se éna skénoma synergasías. This book was originally published on Royal Road.

Check it out there for the real experience. Suddenly, all those small waterfalls snapped into spears. Tears of the Fallen, Sara thought. Let you weep vengeance upon the battlefield. She threw her hand down, and hundreds of spears rained down in the forest, turning thirty spiders into eight-legged porcupines in an instant. Sara's core overclocked, and she gripped her chest. She turned to Raul with blurring vision.

"It's on you!" she yelled in her graveling voice.

"Run!" Sara ran in the opposite direction.

"Where are you going?" he yelled back.

"To heal my core!" she replied as Jason rained meteors over the forest. He was proving that he wouldn't be outdone by anyone.

"He should be enough to carve you a path. If you can keep him in line!" Sara didn't mind leaving Jason, but she hated leaving Raul or the other Chosen. That said, there was no choice. Using archmage magic without a refined core was like someone using a sledgehammer to pound down a nail. It worked, obviously, but it shattered the floorboards. Thankfully, Brisken Cavern had the solution she needed to fix herself. That's the only reason that she decided to come here.

She just expected to get more out of her current power than she did. As she ran, she pierced spiders that got in her way, making them distort, tumor, and explode as she ran to the entrance of the cavern. She prayed that it was empty. To her surprise, it was. Through Divine Eyes, she could see only three spiders amongst the maze of webs, all three guarding the glowing pink lake in the center of the cavern. Sara closed her eyes. Kodikó.

Sara released a divination pulse to check that she was alone and then grinned at the massive Crimson Weaver spiders in front of her, each the size of a suburban home.

"Unfortunately for you, there's no one around to keep me from using my magic," Sara said with a wide grin.

"And no matter how much mana I use, that lake'll cure me. So let's go. Ékame éna víma pros ti statherá ágkira tou péras." Sara's body separated into three forms. Her chest pulsed, and she coughed up phlegm, but she was still grinning.

"Now let's make those blades sing." Sara unsheathed her sword, and it sang like a chime.

"Welcome," she said as she and the others did the same, each sword making different forms.

"To my Singing Sword Style." The three clones ran in unison, ducking and weaving between the web. One clone was split at the waist from running into a crimson web, but the two halves just reformed as they made it to the spider. With a series of beautiful chimes, it slashed its way up a spider's leg, blasting off the support beam-sized leg. The others did the same, whittling themselves down—sacrificing themselves every time Sara's real body, sitting in place to control the clones, was attacked.

Once all three spiders had lost their legs, Sara stood, wobbling back and forth as she walked toward them. She grinned.

"No mana… even under supreme conditions I still can't handle this, huh?" The spiders screeched in unison.

"Well, in normal conditions," Sara said, letting her sword swing outward.

"See… I don't know how to control it yet, but this core of mine? This thing in my chest?" She pounded her chest with her left fist.

"It doesn't just use mana. It uses raw… unadulterated aether. And you know what's funny about aether? You don't need jack shit to make it destroy things!" Sara closed the distance and pierced the raw hide of one of the spiders with a blade swirling with mana. It pierced the spider and the damn thing exploded so violently that half the water in the lake disappeared. That's okay. She couldn't use it all anyway. Sara thought about that and chuckled as she looked at the other two.

"You know…" she said, swaying with a maniacal expression.

"You might only be Rank 6 beasts, but you're still rather strong. I can't wait to get my hands on Telia's Tome.

'Cause once I do… you're fucked." She rushed forward and killed both of them in huge, quaking blasts. Once she finished, she stumbled, mind hazy, and allowed herself to fall face-first into the pink fountain.