The sound of a low groan, accompanied by dozens of overlapping voices, issued from the maw above them. A moment later, it released a scream that bounced off the ravine walls, reaching them in an instant. Tiny shards of stone rattled loose and fell from all around.
Mark clamped his hands over his ears, but it did little to block the piercing sound that assaulted his eardrums. Worse still, the scream wasn't just noise; it carried something deeper, more invasive. A primal sense of panic welled up in his chest, demanding that he flee, no matter the cost.
All around him, people were unraveling. Some stood frozen, stunned by fear. Others bolted toward the outer edges of Mark's shield in blind terror.
What worried him most was that the sound wasn't just a screech. It carried a skill woven into it. Without hesitation, Mark triggered [Cleansing Surge] to push back whatever it was and followed it with [Fend Pain] to bolster their mental defenses.
The moment the spells took hold, it felt like he could breathe again.
But even after this, many of the tenders around him clutched their heads, eyes clamped shut, struggling to compose themselves.
Mark, however, couldn't look away.
The creature looming above was unlike any corrupted they'd seen before. Its skin was pale grey, laced with jagged black cracks that ran across its body like twisted tattoos. Now that it was closer, it resembled some grotesque squid-like entity with ginormous wings that kept it aloft. At the same time, a mass of writhing tentacles all converged at its gaping mouth. Mark could see no eyes, no nostrils, no other features—just that nightmarish orifice.
To call it a spawn of the void was an understatement. It was a horror that shouldn't exist on this plane of reality.
Still, they had one advantage.
When Jonathan had first appeared, Mark thought he was retreating—coming back to the safety of the shield. But instead, he skidded to a halt mid-air and veered sharply to the side, narrowly avoiding the creature's snapping jaws. Then he turned and flew back the way he came, only to dodge another lunge.
That's when Mark realized—he was distracting it on purpose. Buying them time to mount a response.
The problem was, despite its enormous bulk, the creature was unnaturally fast, and Jonathan was struggling to keep ahead of it.
Sam appeared beside him, eyes already locked on the fight above. Mark turned to her.
"All Mana-users need to fire on command. We're hidden right now, but it won't last—so we need to make it count."
Sam nodded, already arriving at the same conclusion. She turned, shouting for Nathan and Captain Price to join her.
Mark turned his attention back to the battle above. Jonathan weaved and rolled through the air, narrowly dodging yet another strike. The monster twisted and contorted mid-flight in ways that defied anatomy—as though it had no bones at all.
By the looks of things, it was getting impatient as Jonathan kept outmaneuvering it just in time.
Their fighters were gathering up and preparing, but Mark could see that Jonathan wouldn't be able to hold out much longer.
So he triggered both [light control] and [earth mastery]. Using it to create six orbs of light with a crystal lens at their centers. He then dumped a large quantity of Mana into the spell. The light coming from the orbs quickly became more brilliant, but then dulled as the quartz lenses he had crafted focused the waves.
A while back, Mark would have needed Sam's help to even sustain one of these spells, but with the advancement of his magics, he could not only sustain multiple instances. He could now either release them in short bursts like he had in the fight with Jonathan, or… he could charge them up like he was doing now.
Chaining all six spells took time and concentration. Something he wouldn't have time for in a real fight, but for a sneak attack?
It was perfect.
The six points of light shimmered, each one flowing through the spectrum—ominous red giving way to cool blues—until they all burned with a unified violet.
Mark positioned and tightened their formation until a ring of spinning crystals hummed in front of him, facing toward the creature.
From there, he glanced to his side at Sam. She had already begun creating some sort of frost spell, while Nathan had produced a halo of rotting magic. Even Jason had begun creating amber to attack at a distance. Everyone with any capability for ranged attacks had begun preparing.
Mark waited for the signal as Boe sat beside, whining. The collie's ears were pressed against his head as a hush fell over the space.
Those brave enough watched the battle above, and Mark sent a 'ready' signal to Jonathan through their link.
He'd been dodging this entire time, but the moment he got the cue, his speed suddenly doubled. Jonathan closed the distance he'd been holding up until now and got in close. The screech from the Corrupted was filled with anger and hate, as it brought a large tendril down on Jonathan. There was a brief flash of aura and a whisper of cold before two crescents of energy cut through the approaching appendages. Black blood rained down from above, and Jonathan crashed into the Corrupted.
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The Corrupted thrashed in pain and swiped out at him.
'Now!' he yelled in their minds.
Jonathan went on guard as the tentacle hit him squarely centermass and sent him hurtling towards the ground below.
Neither of them had time to react, so they pushed forward.
"Release!"
"Fire!"
Sam and Mark shouted out together.
Half a dozen attacks launched from their order and NAS, followed shortly by everyone else.
Over twenty varied attacks were fired in a wave of projectiles, beams, plasma, and so much more. The creature screamed out as the attacks landed all at once. It began to loosen its grip on the edge of the ravine wall, and Mark pushed his spell to completion.
The air, already thick with countless attacks, was pierced by six rotating beams of violet light that slammed into the creature's side at light speed.
The laser wasn't like the one Mark had used before—the kind that simply burned through material with heat and light. This one was something else entirely. When it struck the Corrupted, it didn't just sear the flesh—it pierced cleanly, leaving only a faint glow where it passed. But a moment later, the effects of the attack took hold.
At the points of impact, the creature's flesh began to bubble—strange, swollen growths began blooming beneath its skin. Within seconds, its twisted form distorted grotesquely as the growths erupted, forcing its limbs and torso to bulge in unnatural directions. It howled in agony as its body betrayed it, collapsing under the pressure.
This laser didn't kill by heat. It disrupted the creature at a cellular level, tearing apart its structure from the inside out. The cells themselves couldn't cope—unable to regenerate or contain the explosive cascade of damage.
The Corrupted body quickly gave out under the assault of attacks. With its strength failing, it fell from the wall down into the ravine below. Yet even with all that, it was still not dead. Some last holdout within it body survived.
But as it was still in freefall, Sam let out a small breath, and the spell she had been working on was completed. The Corrupted was not directly over them, but its mass meant that Mark's shield was not completely safe. However, it turned out Sam had already been planning for this eventuality. In a single second, Mark watched the floor of the nearby ravine turn into a glacial tundra. Sharp spikes of ice several feet long jutted out of the ground and stabbed upwards. She even had time to grow an ice shelf to shelter around their hiding place. So when the Corrupted landed, not only was it speared on a bed of frozen nails, its mass didn't affect the dome at all. There was a brief wail from the creature before it let out its final breath.
For a moment, the whole space was quiet before the system dinged.
1 x Corrupted Terrinoid cleansed(10 000)
1000 System Points awarded
Partial exp awarded to (24 users - expand list)
Everyone froze when they saw the amount of Exp coming in. Even divided, that still worked out to four hundred Exp per person.
Granted, it was a very dangerous-looking creature, but something about this wasn't sitting right with Mark. He glanced at Sam, who was chewing on the inside of her cheek. One way to look at this was that with such a deadly creature, the system was just rewarding them accordingly.
The other was that the environment they were now in was so different that this was their normal Exp value. If that was the case, then they were severely out of their depths.
That's when Mark remembered Jonathan and quickly searched the direction he'd fallen. The creature had fallen in the same spot, so all Mark could only hope that he had not been crushed.
Dashing out of the bubble, Mark Andy and Gibby searched for Jon. His link made him easier to find, and a couple of minutes later, they were pulling him out from under the mass of tentacles.
The attack had rattled Jonathan, but otherwise, he was okay after a heavy dose of Prana.
Luckily, Sam saw fit to surround him with ice to protect him from the falling creature.
"That was a smart move luring it like that back there," Mark said to Jon as he healed his shoulder.
Jonathan snorted.
"Thanks, it was the best I could come up with at the time. The damned thing burst out of the ground like a trapdoor spider."
Mark's eyes widened as he glanced back at the massive corpse. The body was still riddled with growths that continued to eat away at its flesh, but still, it was an ambush predator.
Mark had been expecting his last attack to be deadly, but even he blanched slightly when he saw what the Corrupted had become. His brows met in the middle, and it was only when Jon shook him that he broke out of it.
"Hey! Earth to Mark, we should get back. I don't suppose you were able to contain the traces of our energy there?"
Mark blinked as he played back Jonathan's question in his head.
"Ah, no… I was more focused than that big guy, but honestly, I wouldn't have been able to hold it much longer anyway. There are too many of us."
Jonathan hummed.
"Do you think you can create another one now?"
Mark frowned but shrugged.
"Yeah, sure, but it won't do us a lot of good unless we move from this position."
Jonathan nodded and looked to Gibby.
"Get our people ready to move. I'll convince the rest of them it's time to go."
Gibby patted Jonathan on the back and headed towards the bubble with Andy.
Mark knew something was up by the way Jonathan watched the tops of the ravine.
"Jonathan, what's going on up there?" he asked quietly.
"It's better if Sam were here to hear it," he started, but Sam piped up through the link.
'I'm here, answer the question, Jon,' she sent down the link.
Jonathan scratched his neck and glanced back over at the dead Corrupted.
'When we first found this thing, it was because Andy noted that there was a sudden shift in color of the soil,' he started. Sharing an image roundish patch in the dirt where the grey sands became almost black.
"It burst out of the sand after that, but the thing is…" he said and flashed another image to them.
When he'd escaped, Jonathan had taken to the air, and in doing so, he'd gotten a better view of the lands below.
What he saw was a desert covered in countless dark patches of black sand. Each one potentially hiding a similar creature.
Mark's expression grew grim, and he turned back towards the bubble.
"Then we'd better get everyone moving."
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