Although Petra didn't know who the strange old man's 'daughter' was, it didn't take long for her to get a clue. While the United Army was stretching across the city, trying to keep order, and at the same time the Tibon Family and the Black Tower were ending their battle, something began to move…
It started as a tremor that shook the city all at once.
Not an earthquake, nor a wave, no, it was something different, something that shook the foundation of the city and rocked its towers all the way to their peaks. The tower city of Darkwell shuddered, and its bridges groaned as the city itself seemed to gasp…
Then---
The ground split open with a deafening roar!
Hoooooong!
A massive fissure tore through the heart of Darkwell, splitting the swamp below the central city and devouring everything above.
Across the city, everyone froze.
Rotell and Arthur stopped, their heads jumping toward the center of the city. Hexfill and Pillia looked down from the upper city in disbelief. Vellina went pale as a suffocating spiritual pressure swept through the air and enveloped the lower city like a wave. Tepit raised his staff, muttering something under his breath to resist the increasing pressure. Anchor simply kept killing.
Everyone's attention was forcefully drawn to the center of the city.
Then, the ground erupted.
BOOOOOM!
Black mud burst upwards in a geyser, followed by a wave of crawling shadows that swept out from the depths like a tide of a billion legs.
Ants, and thousands of them. They were not alone, hundreds of street-sized insects followed, their black bodies swarming out and filling the city from the bottom up.
Each one was enormous, twenty meters tall at least, and their bodies were covered in black plates that flashed faintly beneath the storm. Their pincers flickered like blades, and their movements were unnaturally fast.
Every step cracked stone, every hiss split the air.
Woosh!
They moved forward like a skilled cavalry!
These ants weren't a local species of the western region.
They weren't Petra's either.
They were war-born beings built to kill, created from something that only knew pain.
The Ant Army erupted from beneath Darkwell in waves, flooding the streets and climbing the towers. Within minutes, the city was swallowed into another bloody battle, only this time, it was far more terrifying than before.
Defenses collapsed instantly.
The Mercenary Alliance, the Hellion Empire, and the rest of the United Army were all caught off guard. Magical barriers shattered, sword-light and spell circles mixed into a storm of chaos, and the city's people began to die as screams filled the air.
One of the main towers in the central city cracked from its base and fell, disappearing into the swamp below, then sinking into the abyss that opened in the center of the city. It produced a deafening crash that sent swamp water flying into the sky.
Darkwell was nearing its end…
* * *
High above the chaos, Petra sat on the roof of a half-collapsed tower with a bit of bread wrapped with both hands. Her legs swung lazily off the edge, the wind tugging at her cloak while an ant maid stood beside her, dutifully holding a black umbrella over her head.
Below her, the city burned.
Its amber light reflected back into her big black eyes as she watched everything unfold.
Petra nibbled quietly.
Even if she was in the ant body, she could still enjoy food.
"Ahh," she hummed, "what a tragedy, what a tragedy~" She leaned forward slightly, her antennae swaying as she peered through the rain. The streets below were crawling with thousands of armored beasts that moved in unison, flooding outwards like a living tide. They killed what they saw, slaughtering both Humans and Dusk Dwellers alike. When they found an alley, they split off like a river meeting a tributary and continued their slaughter.
Her eyes narrowed faintly.
"Oh? Those are…" she muttered to herself.
She tilted her head, pretending to think deeply, but in truth, she just wanted to waste time. "These look… older than mine," she mused. "Are those… 'Warlord Ants', no, they're not…? Hm… They should be the original… not those remnants. But didn't they say that they couldn't be born in this era? Could it be leftover? Mm, were there even leftovers? No, wait… I did it, so…"
Petras' eyes spun.
'Warlord Ants' were the remaining descendants of a powerful creature from the Age of Chaos. Because the current world didn't have the ability to birth 'Warlord Forge Ant Queens', only 'Warlord Ants' were occasionally seen. But these, the ones before her, weren't the diluted descendants that still roamed the continent, the Warlord Ants, no, these were…
"Hmm, odd…"
Petra murmured to herself, leaning back, and balancing her butt on a stone.
For a moment, she simply watched, as if she were watching a theater play and trying to guess the ending. The Ant Army spread like wildfire through the city, their movements perfectly synchronized, and their formation tight and effective.
They were being controlled by a Queen…
They were far more deadly than the Dusk Dwellers.
The humans screamed.
The mages retaliated.
And Petra yawned.
"Should I do something?" she said, lying back and looking up at the sky. "But then again… It might just be better to move on." She blinked once, then glanced towards the distant storm where something immense was starting to stir.
She could 'feel' it, even from here.
Her expression shifted, and her playful curiosity slipped into a genuine interest. "That's where the old man said I can find--- wait…" she muttered. "Those aren't just…"
Her antennae twitched.
"The old man's 'daughter'… oh~," she said to herself, grinning, "could she be…"
BOOOOM!
Another explosion rocked the city below.
She stood up, stretching lazily as the ant adjusted the umbrella. "Well," she said with a small smile, "let's go and find a place to stay near the finish line, this whole mess should be over soon..."
And with that, Petra vanished into the storm, her Ant-like laughter echoing faintly through the rain.
* * *
Ka-Ka-Kacha-BOOM! The storm had reached its peak!
Lightning split the sky like cracks across the clouds. The towers that formed Darkwell shook from their very foundations, their bridges continuing to collapse under the weight of unending battles and the unyielding tide below.
All around the city, chaos reigned.
* * *
Darkwell, Lower City, South.
In the lower part of the southern side of the city, the United Army faced the Dusk Dwellers and slowly pushed them out of the city. Rows of soldiers fought waist-deep in the flooding streets, their shields raised, and their blades glowing faintly through the murky mud.
Each time a black wave of Dusk Dwellers crashed against their formation, the front line broke and re-formed, their screams swallowed by the rain.
The soldiers of the United Army didn't fight for victory, they fought for time.
And time was what they lacked…
-
Darkwell, City Wall, North.
In the northern part of the city, near the outer walls, the silver shield fought off one colossal insect after another. Massive centipedes the size of streets, Beatles that could move a house, and hundreds of ants, the smallest of which were at least double a human's size.
Anchor held the bridges that connected the towers like ramparts.
His black armor was coated with rain and blood, his eyes flickering as two steady points of crimson light. He said nothing as he crashed forward, cutting through ants, and moving like a machine.
Each swing of his broadsword exceeded what he should have been able to produce, and the spiritual energy that radiated from his body was causing more damage than the attackers.
His soldiers followed, silent and steady, yet their formation tightened around his maddened charge.
-
Darkwell, East Alleyways.
In the eastern part of the city, the air here was freezing. Frost covered the walls, and shards of ice drifted through the wind like blades of ice. A white veil pushed back the darkness, corroding the city, and turning its stone streets brittle.
Tepit stood in the center, his staff raised high, runes of frost and death crawling along its surface. Each word he spoke rose another skeletal hand that thrust out and reached towards the things lurking in the darkness.
Walls were stitched together, and broken bridges were held up, opening the way forward for the pale army. As he moved, his followers spread out and cleared the alleys one at a time.
-
Darkwell, Swamp Docks, West
Rotell's unit fought with surgical precision.
Her rapier flashed through the rain in thin arcs of silver light that cut cleanly through the joints of towering ants. Every strike was deliberate, and every movement was measured.
She never overextended herself and worked perfectly with the other warriors. Around her, the soldiers moved as a single body. They formed a moving wall between the civilians and the monsters, advancing inch by inch toward the docks, leading them down and through the city.
The last ships were already waiting…
These were special vessels reinforced with runes and thick plating, designed to survive the poisoned waters and shifting swamps, even during a swamp storm. They groaned under the sky, not because of their size, instead, their weight was pushing the limitations of what a single ship could have.
Civilians were pushed aboard in tight groups as the battle continued.
-
Darkwell, Inner Garden, Central City.
Purple light bled through the rain as Vellina's witches drifted between shattered pillars, their laughter floating through the storm. Each movement of their hands twisted the minds of the incoming creatures, turning enemies against each other.
They danced to the open garden, one of the few places in all of Duskwell, no, the western region that even dared to possess such a vibrant green.
Mystic flowers bloomed from corpses, releasing clouds of violet mist that flowed like incense.
It was a picture of beauty and death, hand in hand, filled with the youthful laughter of young girls.
-
Darkwell, Flooded Streets.
Hexfill led from the front, pushing through Darkwell's abandoned streets.
His white-furred armor was soaked in black blood, and rain slid off his blade.
Unlike Rotell's grace and Anchor's brutality, Hexfill was closer to a traditional swordsman, only with the added air of a warlord. He was a naturally born leader, one that had steadily walked the path that had been set out before him by the countless generations before.
Around him, the White Wolf veterans advanced as a single body.
They were efficient, brutal, and inexhaustible!
Above the streets, Pillia's Silver Eye scouts swept through the storm.
Lightning flashed, briefly illuminating their silhouettes as sharp cries rang out, relaying positions and threats before vanishing back into the darkness of the surrounding city.
Together, they hunted down all the stragglers.
-
Darkwell, Lower Slums.
The lower districts of Darkwell were completely submerged.
More than a tenth of the city had already been swallowed by the swamp, and the murk was still rising. Those trapped in the slums had nothing left to rely on but the city walls, thin barriers of stone and runes standing between them and the swamp that relentlessly attempted to break in.
There were no soldiers here, only survivors...
Families shifted through the black water, dragging the remnants of their lives behind them. Every few moments, the ground shuddered, and sections of the city collapsed.
Runes carved into the walls flickered weakly, flaring and dimming as they struggled to hold back the tide, but it wasn't enough.
The water kept coming, and time was almost up…
-
Darkwell, Heart of the City, Stabilizing Matrix.
Runes burst and sizzled beneath the pressure of the storm.
This was an open room in the center of the city.
In the middle of the room rose an enormous steel pillar, the core of the stabilizing system that maintained the city and kept it afloat.
Engineers in tattered cloaks worked in chaotic silence, scrambling across the trembling floor as the anchoring arrays began to fail. Each rune they re-carved burned straight through their gloves, searing flesh and bone, but none of them stopped, not even for a moment.
They couldn't, the city had to remain standing—
At least, for a little while longer...
Sweat mixed with rain and blood as the matrix flickered, layers of light folding over one another in unstable patterns. Every tremor sent cracks racing through the floor beneath their feet.
They all knew the truth.
The moment these runes failed, everything above them would come down. Not only that, but the whole city would fall apart, and Darkwell would go with it.
They were already dead, but every second they could persist would be one more life they could save.
In the eyes of a certain young girl, she worked through the pain and continued to carve what her parents had taught her over the years. Her fingertips were already bare bone, but she pushed herself just a little bit further with each passing second.
As a tuft of white-streaked-blue hair fell from her forehead and blocked her vision, the room was suddenly ignited in a flash of blinding white light.
* * *
Ka-Ka-Kacha-BOOM! The storm screamed…
Lightning struck, splitting the sky. The world shook with a violent quake. The dark swamp erupted upwards, vomiting toxic water, mud, and broken roots into the sky and across the city. From the depths, something vast stirred, something terrifying, and something nobody wanted to see.
HOOOOONG!
Time had finally run out...
-
The Corrupted World Tree finally began to stir again.
Even its simplest movement, a mere convulsion, shook the world as if mountains were being moved like chess pieces. Throughout the region, the massive roots that stretched through the western region, those that had yet to move since the initial unrest, finally began to shift again.
Hoooooong—!
An earthshaking tremor ran through the earth as the massive roots began to stretch across the continent, but this time they extended even further. This 'small' movement alone was enough to topple cities, and Darkwell was no exception.
The towers snapped.
The bridges broke.
The sky went black.
And for a single moment, the storm went silent.
Then… came the sound. The deep, groaning cry of the earth splitting apart—
HOOOOOOOOOONG!! RUMBEL! RUMBEL! RUMBEL!
Its roots tore free from the earth, twisting up through the swamp like serpents. Each one was thick as a tower, there surface covered in pulsating runes that glowed sickly red beneath the rain. They stretched toward the city, wrapping around towers, and dragging them downward as they rose one after another.
The Corrupted World Tree had finally begun to 'feed'.
* * *
Woosh! Elena moved quickly through the upper levels of the city, her mantle whipping about in the storm as the rain was deflected by a thin layer of energy.
Every hallway she passed was filled with a bloody battle.
She was everywhere, moving like the wind, pulling people from collapsed bridges, casting barriers to deflect attacks, and guiding soldiers to the evacuation points. All the while, she moved slowly towards the peak of the city.
All across the city, the major powers struggled to regroup.
Rotell and Arthur helped coordinate the lower evacuations, guiding civilians out of the flooding streets. Hexfill and Anchor carved a path toward the docks. Vellina's witches turned the air into a maze of illusions, confusing the creatures long enough for survivors to flee.
Despite everything, it still wasn't enough…
The towers of Darkwell were collapsing one after another because the runes beneath the swamp were overheating and breaking. The stabilizing anchors were failing, and soon, the city would be submerged. Through it all, the roots of the Corrupted World Tree continued to rise and fork into smaller segments, large enough to wrap around a person and crush them like they were a normal ant.
The situation was reaching a peak…
* * *
Deep inside the collapsing city, near the highest point, Elena found 'him'.
It was Pen, unconscious, but alive...
The boy's body was bound in dozens of runes, each one flickering quietly and restricting a different element. His soul was unstable, but fortunately still intact.
Overall, his life was not in danger. At least, not for now…
Elena crouched beside him, drawing a circle across his chest with her finger. The symbols came alive immediately, burning 'something' Into his body.
"Hold on…" she muttered, placing her hand over his forehead next. "You're not dying yet, there's still a long way to go." The light from her 'spell' filled the room.
"Mmm…"
For just a moment, Pen's eyes opened ever so slightly. They closed again almost immediately, but it was enough to see Elena's face one last time.
Then came the long darkness...
After she stabilized his condition, it was time to move on—
But before she could move him, the air shifted behind her.
Elena's hair stood on end.
"Are you sure you should be doing that…?" came an ice-cold voice.
Elena's eyes snapped open, and she turned her head to meet the man behind her.
Kareth Tibon stepped out from the shadows, his long black robe soaked and torn, yet his expression was calm, too calm. It was inhuman. Behind him, the remaining Tibon guards formed a semicircle that pushed towards Elena and Pen, their weapons already drawn.
They had emerged from nothing, leaving Elena slightly confused. It was unlike her not to have noticed something so obvious. She stood up slowly, the faint light still burning in her palm.
"He's coming with me," she said in an unquestionable tone.
Kareth smiled faintly. "You've overstepped, Miss Hero. Putting aside that this is a family matter, are you sure it's alright to help him? You of all people should know what this may 'change'."
Ka-Ka-Kacha-BOOM!
Elena frowned.
The two stared at each other across the ruined chamber as a flash of light lit up their faces.
Then, without warning, they moved together.
BOOM!
Spiritual energy flared, and Elena's golden light met Kareth's silver light. Bang! The spiritual energy collided, crushing the surrounding environment. The glass shattered, the walls fractured, and the ceiling gave way and collapsed, the world turned into a blur of magic runes, chaotic energy, and deafening soundwaves that followed the shockwaves out into the storm.
Ka-Ka-Kacha-BOOM!
Their clash lasted only a moment, but when it ended, Kareth stood victorious.
Elena was only at the peak of the second realm, but Kareth was definitely at the fifth realm of the necromancer pathway, no, even if he wasn't, he could display that level of power. Even with Elena's uniqueness, she wouldn't be able to fight him right now.
She gritted her teeth.
What a mess…
The fifth level was on an entirely different level than the fourth.
This applied to all pathways.
For those special existences that could fight above their level, the extent to which they could overextend became far more limited after one entered the fifth Realm. That is to say, Elena, a peak second-level cultivator, could try to fight a fourth-level cultivator.
As for what a fifth-realm necromancer could do…
Spiritualist, Spirit Seer, Spirit Singer, Spirit Weaver, Severed Soul.
She couldn't tell if he was in the fifth realm, but…
The fifth realm of the necromancer pathway was the 'Severed Soul' Realm. This meant that Kareth was basically a walking soul with the skin draped over himself like a set of clothes. The physical body basically meant nothing to him. In addition, the amount of spiritual energy that he could store within his body was far above hers, despite not being a path that focused on spiritual energy. The only advantage she had over him was physical strength, and even then, she wouldn't be able to kill him.
In a straight-up fight, Elena had no way of winning, but...
After the first exchange.
Kareth's forces withdrew, but his expression never changed, he simply smiled. It was a small, satisfied smile that said more than words.
Elena knew that smile.
It was a message.
But… why did she feel as if something was wrong…?
She gritted her teeth, scooped up Pen, and shot out the broken window behind her with a flash of light.
Kareth just stood there, watching her go.
Why didn't he chase…? Well…
Ka-Ka-Kacha-BOOM! Flash!
* * *