Chapter 1563: She Does Not Make Sense (1)
The six microscopic entities were immediately suffused with energies beyond mana, and in an instant, each of them turned into behemoths that had not graced Aigas’ lands since before the Grand Wars.
The greatest known dragons, Jiggorrhax and Jerthrax combined paled in comparison to their sizes. Even their father, Seongssax, was not their match.
The six monstrosities that emerged were fiercer than anything Quintess or Listafelle ever made. Their scales were harder than the compounded mass from entire islands. Their flesh was naturally tougher than that of any living thing Aigas could produce in the current age, whether within its natural bounds or in Clusters – and it went without saying their other physical qualities were extremely daunting as well.
Aigas was torn. It recognised the powers of these creatures – the first to ever be created. It remembered their powers and went mad. Hurricanes and tsunamis rent it at once, destabilising everything on this end of the barrier splitting the world; it might very well have been the end of Aigas to a mortal watching, and indeed, there were some still lingering.
The six great creatures stood on six powerful legs, each in its whole larger than Feinheath itself. They had to fly up with their great sets of webbed wings in order to not swarm the continent, and even then, nothing much changed. They flooded the sky, warping space and distorting the clouds simply by existing.
Each of them had different variations of scales and the features of their heads were wildly opposed, not to mention abhorrent. When they opened their mouths, their many eyes focused on the masked man and Nana, the churning of their immense, natural powers caused the seas to begin evaporating at a wild pace. Aigas would be dry in more than an hour; or perhaps even quicker, if these creatures – these Drakkens – expelled their vicious powers.
...Which they did.
Rias snorted and squeezed Nana’s neck, prompting her to do just the thing she had been dreading: dispersing the powers of the suddenly emerged enemies.
All six of the Drakkens drew in sharp breaths, siphoning into their maws the natural disasters they had caused. The gaps between their scales lit up in resplendent colours – each no prettier than the colour of magma.
...And then they breathed out.
It wasn’t fire that poured from the six maws. It was something far more baleful, masquerading as heat. It was a collection of jokers in conceptual form. Or rather, extinction given a less avoidable, comprehensible shape. It took on any colour it pleased, searing as a jet ten times faster than light towards the masked man.
Rias was faster than the jets, of course, He flashed away with Nana, whom he shielded from everything else spilling from the Drakkens, not to mention Kintar’s influence. (He knew she could kill the silver-haired woman easy as breathing, after all.)
But Kintar was able to trace Rias and his ward immediately using Nana’s mana core. She couldn’t reach it, but sense it she could.
Just when the six jets of abstract destruction completely annihilated Feinheath – burning cities, towns, farms, magical and natural treasures alike – turning it to ash and thinning the ocean around it to a kind of steam so hot it could melt space... they adjusted their aim by Kintar’s accord. They followed the masked man closely, even when he made another warp, strode through the air as though he owned the skies, and waded through the turbulence.
It wasn’t that the necromancer believed the Drakkens could harm him, of course. Even discounting the powers of his current body, he now had the Eye of Backfire, which fired back any and all energy-type attacks in his direct line of sight with the eye as long their magnitude of offensive power didn’t exceed his capability to defend excessively.
No.
Rias was determined to crush Kintar by squashing her options.
"Nana," he said just as he warped with the poor woman onto the back of one Drakken. The two might as well have been standing on a small world. Rias pointed at an adjacent Drakken. The creature seemed reluctant to casually fire off a jet of destruction at its fellow. It instead flew swiftly in its kin’s direction to bite into the enemies.
Nana did not dare complete the obvious command Rias gave. This exceeded her abilities, she knew. But Rias was aware of this. That was why he whispered something to the woman as he pointed. It was something he often declared before a major battle to his enemies, but as it occurred, his current opponents were an odd bunch immune to that power. His allies weren’t, though.
...!!!
Nana felt her strength suddenly begin to grow. At once, her power rose by 19%!
The abrupt power-up was painful, but exhilarating.
"Now, do it." Rias commanded.
Nana acquiesced. Her Eye of Dispersal aimed at the Drakken Rias pointed at.
Blood squirted from her socket immediately, and her eye turned so bloodshot it could burst... but the incoming Drakken suddenly paused in its flight. A dark energy pulsated from Nana’s eye, washing forth repeatedly. Grains of dust started to spill from the creature’s outline, little by little. It was being dispersed!
It was a feat, indeed, and it only continued to become more impressive from there as Nana’s powers shot up to 28%!
When more of the stalled Drakken started dusting off, Rias was pleased. His pleasure rose still when he ducked back with Nana to avoid Kintar’s sudden lunge. She had appeared out of nowhere, her hand poised to stab Nana’s head.
After missing with her attack, she turned to Rias, her eyes narrowing.
"Getting desperate? I did tell you to run."
"I’m not the kind of lady to accept such courtesies. I reeeeeeeally want to beat your ass," Kintar said, her eyes widening as though to take in the whole of what was before her.
Suddenly, she shuttled forth at ridiculous speed – Divine speed.
...!!
Rias frowned and pulled Nana behind him. (She kept her eye on the Drakken.) As a chittering laughter came from a jubilant Kintar, the masked man found himself having to actually watch out for Kintar’s movements.
She was... fast.
’She’s not using mana,’ the masked man noted, ’so how is she suddenly...?’
Kintar bobbed left and right repeatedly almost twenty times in the span of half a microsecond, threw a swift right jab that Rias dodged, then a body blow that he ate without feeling so much as a tickle. The masked man retaliated with a ferocious right hook to her head. It was so effective that even though it shattered Kintar’s dome into a mess immediately, she didn’t lose her consciousness until the rest of her body crashed onto the Drakken’s scale (the ground)!
...But just as Kintar received the fatal blow, a microscopic mana entity had been released from her body. A complicated series and sequence of powers were funnelled through it in a span that even Rias found hard to calculate, and became a new Kintar. It happened so fast that by the time Rias struck the first Kintar, the second one had already been born. While grinning like a devil, her face turned red for some odd reason, she actually landed a strike on the masked man’s face.
This one... hit a little hard. It didn’t hurt, but it distracted Rias for an impossible morsel of time.
That impossible instance was enough time for a concentrated jet of abstract destruction to fly towards him from another one of the six Drakkens, poised to vanquish!