Chapter 672: Enhanced Destruction
In the center of the meadow, the remaining twenty-eight summoned warrior women were locked in combat with a massive pack of shadow-tusk boars and stone-carapace badgers.
’Nice...’
They were executing textbook military coordination.
A boar the size of a wagon thundered into the shield line and the front rank braced as one with their boots sliding through the dirt and earth-mana flaring up through their greaves to lock their stances.
As the beast bounced off the wall of steel with a boom that shook leaves from the trees... Two spears punched through the gaps on either side of the shields, one into the eye and one up under the jaw, and the boar dropped.
A stone-carapace badger burrowed beneath the line and erupted behind the archers, and the nearest two women dropped their bows, drew short blades, and carved it open before the dust settled.
"Switch!" a sergeant barked, and the shield-bearers cycled out in rotation without a single gap while fresh arrows whistled overhead in tight mana-infused volleys that shattered skulls from fifty paces away.
Silas watched the display, nodding in quiet appreciation.
’That’s good,’ Silas thought. ’They aren’t just strong individuals... their teamwork is exceptional as well, Aki won’t have to micromanage every border skirmish with troops this well-drilled.’
His gaze drifted past the main skirmish toward a colossal weeping willow situated on a raised knoll by the riverbank.
Sitting casually against the thick trunk was Thor.
The hulking golden-haired warrior was completely ignoring the battle, an enormous wooden flagon of ale clutched in one massive hand while her other held a half-eaten roasted wild boar leg that was the size of a man’s torso.
She tore off a massive hunk of meat with her teeth, chewing contentedly before letting out a boisterous thunderous burp that made the leaves above her rustle.
Sitting right beside her on a flat boulder was Morwenna.
The dark-haired Captain had Tidebringer propped against her knee, calmly slicing thin elegant strips of roasted meat with a small utility knife and popping them into her mouth with stoic indifference.
’I miss Silas...’ Morwenna thought.
And standing just a few paces away at the edge of the knoll was Eluned.
The pristine former Goddess of the World Tree was waving a small silk handkerchief, bouncing lightly on her heels, and shouting encouragement at the top of her lungs with the doting enthusiasm of a mother at a children’s sports festival.
"That’s it, my darling! Step inside its guard! Watch the club! Beautiful footwork, sweet girl! Show that overgrown brute what a true lady can do!"
Silas followed Eluned’s frantic waving, his eyes landing on the far side of the clearing.
...There, standing in the middle of a flattened crater of crushed dirt, was Aki and facing her was a nine-foot-tall mountain troll.
The beast was a nightmare of muscle and stone, its mottled gray hide encrusted with jagged granite plates and a massive iron-banded tree trunk clutched in its fist like a club.
"RAAAHHHHH!" It roared with a deafening bellow that sent spit and foul breath spraying across the grass, and swung the club down in a devastating vertical slam that could have flattened a war wagon.
Silas’s instincts flared.
His foot shifted forward, his hand reflexively rising to unleash a gale-force wind blast to swat the beast aside then, he stopped.
’Wait...’ Silas narrowed his eyes, his foot settling back into the grass. ’She feels... confident.’
Aki did not run, scream, or cower behind a barrier.
Her movement was fluid and frighteningly precise... As the massive wooden club came crashing down, she took a single diagonal step forward, slipping inside the weapon’s lethal arc by less than an inch.
BOOOOOM!
The club pulverized the earth where her heels had just been, sending a shower of dirt and shattered rock into the air.
Aki was already moving through the debris with her hair streaming behind her.
"Mmm..."
She had no weapon, all she had there were her small delicate hands but as she closed the distance her posture dropped into a low coiled martial stance.
WHOOSH!
She stepped into the pocket with her bare palm driving upward like a piston into the soft joint beneath the troll’s armored kneecap.
CRACK!
A concussive shockwave of internal mana detonated through the joint and the nine-foot behemoth let out a startled howl as its right leg buckled and its massive frame crashed onto one knee, shaking the clearing.
"NGH!!!"
Aki pivoted instantly.
She used the bent knee as a step and ran up the troll’s thigh in two light bounds with her left elbow whipping around to drive into the monster’s exposed solar plexus.
BANG!
"GAH!"
She landed on its forearm, spun, and brought a rising palm strike up under its stone-plated chin that snapped its head back with an audible crunch.
Thump, thump, thump!
Aki took a deep breath and her heartbeat counted in her ears.
’Good... Good... Keep moving!’
The beast swatted at her with a backhand that would have flattened a house however Aki dropped flat beneath it, felt the wind of its passing rip the ribbon from her hair, and rolled away across the dirt.
She came up in a crouch with her chest heaving slightly and a wide fierce grin on her face.
"Alright!"
The troll stumbled upright, shaking its massive head as its tiny red eyes burned with rage.
’I’ve raged it enough... It’s time to finish it.’
Aki leaped back, landing lightly on the balls of her feet.
Her bright cheerful blue eyes suddenly darkened with the vibrant azure swirling and bleeding into a deep ominous royal purple.
’Destruction...’ she thought, her focus narrowing down to a single razor-sharp point.
Deep within her soul, she reached for that foreign terrifying authority... the royal-purple primordial flame she had inherited through her lineage and she found it.
FWOOSH!
A jet of pure royal-purple fire erupted from her extended palm and struck the troll squarely in the center of its chest.
"SKREEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"
The beast let out an ear-piercing unnatural shriek that sounded like grinding metal and tried patting it out, however the purple fire did not burn like normal flame... It consumed.
The jagged granite plates on its chest began to dissolve into drifting violet ash with the flesh beneath melting away as the conceptual law of Destruction tore through the monster’s physical structure on a cellular level.
Yet, beneath her bangs, Aki’s brow furrowed in frustration.
’I’ve wondered again and again... how does Father wield this power so effortlessly?’
Her internal thoughts raced as she watched the purple fire spread. Her natural affinity for Destruction was still painfully low compared to him.
To her father, the flame was an extension of his breath, a casual flick of the wrist that erased entire mountains from reality without a second thought but to her...?
To her, it felt like trying to channel molten lead through glass pipes.
Despite the fire eating away at its chest, the troll’s monstrous vitality and regenerative core refused to yield.
The flesh around the wound blackened and crumbled, but the beast roared through the agony, raised its massive fists, and charged straight at her with suicidal fury with each stride shaking the earth.
’It’s not enough,’ Aki realized, watching the nine-foot shadow loom over her. ’At this rate, it will reach me before the flame finishes consuming its heart.’
She planted her boots, locking her knees as she closed her eyes.
’I finally have it...’ she thought with a fierce defiant light igniting in her gaze. ’I know the frequency now. It’s going to hurt like hell... but I just have to force the output!’
She clamped down on her core with ruthless willpower.
THUMP!
Her soul throbbed violently with an agonizing white-hot spasm tearing through her internal pathways through her core.
Drip!
A thin line of crimson blood leaked from the corner of her right eye, trailing down her pale cheek like a bloody tear as the optic nerves screamed under the mana pressure.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The purple flames of Destruction violently flared outward, tripling in size, transforming from a thin jet into a roaring ravenous vortex of annihilation.
A shockwave of violet light rolled across the clearing and flattened the grass in a ring, whipped every cloak, and made the water of the mountain stream jump out of its bed.
Across the meadow, Thor stopped with the boar leg halfway to her mouth.
"Oho~" She muttered with her eyebrows climbing.
Morwenna’s knife paused mid-slice while Eluned’s handkerchief froze in the air as she pressed her other hand over her heart.
The charging troll never got the chance to swing.
The moment the expanded purple vortex touched its hide, the monster simply ceased to exist.
Its armored shoulders, its roaring head, its massive limbs, and its colossal stone club dissolved into fine glittering dust, scattering into the wind as if it had never existed in this realm at all.
WHOOSH.
The purple fire snapped out, leaving behind a clean, empty crater in the grass.
Aki staggered backward three steps with her small boots dragging through the dirt as her chest rising and falling in ragged breathless gasps.
’I’m good...’ she told herself, pressing a trembling hand against her ribs. ’I’m still on my feet.’
Her right eye was pitch black and her vision on that side completely blinded by the blown capillaries and ruptured mana channels but before the panic could set in, a soft emerald-green rune carved along her collarbone flared with warm soothing light.
Tingle!
The high-tier regeneration rune went to work instantly, knitting the delicate ocular vessels, clearing the pooled blood, and restoring her vision to crystal clarity within three heartbeats.
Aki reached up with the back of her sleeve, scrubbing the drying blood from her cheek with her heart still hammering against her ribs.
’So that’s what it really is...’ she thought, staring at the empty crater where the troll had been. ’Destruction doesn’t burn things, and it doesn’t break them either... It tells them they aren’t allowed to exist anymore, and they listen in a way. No wonder the regeneration couldn’t keep up... You can’t heal something that isn’t there.’
It was dumb but she always thought that Destruction just destroyed things on a molecular level, Aki flexed her tingling fingers.
’And at my level, it only just works... Once I push past the threshold, nothing survives it, not even a troll that regrows its own flesh but the price is awful. I just used one blast and my eye bled, if I do two in a row and I’m blind on this side for good... Father makes it look like breathing, and I’m over here pushing a boulder uphill with my face.’
She let out a long breath, shaking out her tingling hands then, she turned around and froze.
Standing at the edge of the clearing, watching her with a warm proud smile, was Silas.
Aki’s eyes went wide.
The grim expression of a warrior vanished in a fraction of a millisecond, replaced instantly by pure joy.
"SILAS!" she screamed at the top of her lungs.
She didn’t care about her sore muscles and she didn’t care about the twenty-eight warrior women watching her from the clearing, nor did she care that she was currently covered in dirt and soot.
She threw her arms out and sprinted across the meadow at full speed with her boots barely touching the grass as she charged straight toward him like an overly affectionate puppy.
"Silas! You came! You actually—"
She skidded to an abrupt halt five feet away, her arms dropping to her sides, her head tilting with comical confusion.
Her bright blue eyes slowly drifted from Silas’s face... downward... to the armored figure still slung unceremoniously over his right shoulder like a prize-winning salmon.
Aki blinked once then twice.
"Uhm..." Aki pointed a small, hesitant finger at the upside-down warrior. "Silas? Why do you have my First Hero on your shoulder? Is she... broken?"
From his shoulder, Ther’Abella let out a muffled dying whimper of irreparable shame.
She didn’t want Lady Aki to see her like this!
Silas chuckled.
He reached around, grabbed Ther’Abella by the collar of her silver cuirass, and casually set her down onto her feet on the grass beside him.
The proud Viridian officer immediately staggered, clutching her sore ribs with her face still burning a brilliant furious red as she glared daggers at the turf, completely unable to meet her Lady’s eyes.
Silas stepped forward, closing the distance between himself and Aki.
He reached out with both hands, gently ruffling the messy bangs on top of her head with an affectionate grin.
"We were just playing," Silas said, his voice warm, gentle, and utterly sincere. "Officially, though... congratulations on becoming a Lord, Aki. You did great."
Aki’s cheeks flushed a bright radiant pink at his words, her blue eyes shimmering with open affection.
"It’s only because of you, Silas," she murmured shyly, ducking her head slightly while shifting her weight from foot to foot.
She began hopping in place, tiny springy bounces with both heels leaving the grass at once and her bangs bouncing with every landing, looking so much like an excited bunny that Silas half expected a cottontail tail to start wagging behind her.
"If you hadn’t helped me with the core foundation... I would never have stabilized the territory."
She stopped hopping with her hands nervously fidgeting with the hem of her soot-stained tunic as she looked up through her lashes.
"Can I... hug you?" she asked in a small, hopeful voice.
Silas chuckled warmly, opening his arms wide in an easy invitation.
Aki didn’t hesitate for a single second.
She threw herself forward, wrapping her arms around his torso and burying her face into his chest, squeezing him with enough raw awakened enthusiasm that his ribs gave a small protesting creak.
Silas smiled, resting one hand against the back of her head, completely accustomed to her bursts of affection now.
Standing three paces away, clutching her still-tender ribs, Ther’Abella’s jaw dropped in horror.
’What in the celestial heavens am I looking at...?’ the First Hero thought, her blue eyes burning with outrage as she stared at the scene.
’He is embracing another woman! Right out in the open! Without a shred of shame or modesty!’ Her gaze darted frantically over toward Princess Aeliana, and then further toward the weeping willow where Lady Eluned had been watching. ’When his lawful wife is standing right there?! He is two-timi—’
Before the thought could even finish forming in her scandalized mind, the heavy crunch of gravel announced a new arrival.
Morwenna stepped into the clearing.
The tall dark-haired pirate carried her halberd loosely over one shoulder, still chewing on a strip of smoked meat.
Without waiting for Aki to fully disengage, Morwenna casually leaned in, caught Silas by the scruff of his collar, and planted a firm resounding kiss directly onto his cheek.
Smack!
"Welcome back, Silas," Morwenna said with chuckle, patting his back twice with a hand that lingered a half-second longer than it needed to with a small flush creeping along her cheekbones that she hid behind a bite of smoked meat. "You took your sweet time..."
Silas grinned, rubbing his cheek. "Good to see you too, Morwenna."
Ther’Abella’s knees nearly buckled.
Her eyes bulged so wide they threatened to roll right out of their sockets with her mouth working silently like a beached fish.
’No...’ she screamed internally, her hands flying up to grip her silver hair in panic. ’He isn’t two-timing! He’s three-timing! Three of them! In broad daylight! In front of the entire regiment!’
The depravity of it made her blood run cold.
What kind of degenerate unprincipled scoundrel had infiltrated Lady Eluned’s life?! He was a walking moral catastr—
"Darling~!"