Chapter 69: A Final Hope

  Erik’s aura snapped taut and expanded backward, his Authority effect activating moments later. Half of Erik’s energy vanished from his body in an instant, but not without results. The Hellbeast army divided. The half standing between Erik and his companions charged ahead, crashing into their siblings with bared teeth and claws.

  “Wha—” shouted John as his nephew leapt towards him, his arms bearing claws of their own. John kept his cool and evaded the attack by grabbing Erik’s arm and throwing him back. As expected, John was faster than Erik.

  Erik’s pores opened to release a constant thick, black mist as he ran in for another attack. A hound snapped at him but got pricked by Gloom, who extended its body like needles to defend its Titan. The hound yelped at the sudden stinging as Erik swiped at John the second time.

  The Warlock’s hand now clutched a short, black sword. It had a slight curvature on its blade, and along its edge were jagged waves like those of fire. The sword deflected the Titan’s sharp claws as the Warlock took advantage of its additional length, scoring a wound on Erik’s left arm.

  The wound didn’t bleed, but a thin pillar of dark smoke rose from it as the skin burned. Erik swiped again with both arms, John blocking both with the sword. Like the giant hound on the beach in Africa, his dark miasma didn’t seem able to enter the Warlock. It might be because the Warlock was stronger than him, but Erik had little to go on. It was still effective against the hounds fighting each other around them, so he kept it active despite the drain.

  John got the upper hand, taking full advantage of his higher strength and speed, as well as his longer reach. He sliced a wide arc Erik had to bow under and smashed his knee into the Titan’s face. Erik flew back as blood spattered from his nose and mouth, but was quick to get back up.

  Erik picked up a small rock from the ground and threw it in his uncle’s direction. John evaded it with a grin, likely thinking how desperate his nephew was to throw rocks at him during their fight.

  John charged back into the fray but evaded to the right when Erik threw a frisbee at him. The Warlock smashed into something at high speed, shoulder first. He bounced back from the impact and heard the clinking sounds coming from below. Confused, he looked at the metal pieces that glinted in the dim night light from the near-risen sun as they started glowing blue.

  Seeing the frisbee thrown earlier hovering in mid-air beside him, John escaped the immediate area by jumping back just in time before Erik’s Tesla Bomb exploded with blue streaks. But Erik had planned for that.

  A saw blade whirred towards John’s landing spot just as his feet touched ground. The Warlock slammed his black blade into the rotating weapon, sparks flying around him as he parried it away from him. Erik flew at him with his leg extended, landing a heavy kick in his uncle’s gut. Then it was John’s turn to fly back.

  The battle between the Warlock and Titan raged on, both fighting furiously to get the upper hand on the other. Erik was the only one to get any injuries, but they were small and cauterised in a flash, which prevented him from suffering any meaningful blood loss.

  Erik altered his limbs on the go, going from agile, canine feet to amphibious jumping feet with only a half-second’s worth of normal human feet mixed in-between. His arms changed from predatory claws to protective scales depending on the situation. The scales were strong enough to deflect the fiery sword if Erik angled his arm just right, often giving the Titan a slight edge as the Warlock’s blade slid away.

  Erik’s Unleash negated John’s faster speed and reflexes, but Erik was spending more energy, especially when shifting his form so frequently. With his aura trick at the start of the fight and his ever-growing number of morphs, along with the output of miasma, Erik’s energy was diving. His uncle didn’t seem to use any energy at all; the sword likely having a onetime summoning cost.

  Erik still had tricks up his sleeve ready to go, however. He kept the use of his other powers at zero, waiting for the right time to surprise the Warlock. John’s story from earlier, so long as he wasn’t lying, also meant that he had several abilities he hadn’t used in this fight, so Erik had to keep vigilant.

  He found himself lucky that his uncle didn’t use his other combative powers against him, as he was just one wound away from getting the miasma through. A small amount of it wouldn’t be enough, but if the Warlock wasn’t hiding any healing abilities, Erik could push more miasma into the wound every second they remained close.

  The rapid clashes continued, Erik’s extended claws time and time again proving just an inch too short to score a wound on his adversary. Determined to cut John’s skin, Erik knew he overreached every time, but he had little chance at all without his miasma getting in. The clawed Titan jumped in with a quick fist that was dodged. His left arm swiped downwards as Erik got down on all fours, using his legs and arms to boost himself forward, head first. John evaded, but it had been close. Erik continued his assault with a flurry of kicks, which were blocked.

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  Gloom didn’t remain idle during these exchanges, but it focused more on whichever hound was trying to get a scratch in from the sidelines. Whenever Erik landed a body blow, Gloom tried pricking the Warlock. The delay caused by both the surprise hits and Gloom vigilantly protecting its Titan, they delivered plenty of near hits, though no jackpots.

  The Warlock threw a fist in the Titan’s face while Erik was in mid-air. Erik tried grabbing hold of the arm, but the Warlock had already pushed him too far back. He landed in a roll and jumped into the fray again.

  The Warlock countered with his sword, unleashing a small flurry of attacks focused on Erik’s upper body. The strikes were fast, more so than Erik could protect himself from. He got another few small wounds that sizzled and burnt but surprised John with a quick beam of light using ‘Flash’, the second part of his Umbralux ability.

  The speedy beam hit the Warlock in his face, turning his skin a shade more red despite the direct hit. It had the desired effect, however.

  As John flinched, Erik got in close. With claws extended, the Titan cleaved the skin on his uncle’s chest. The black sword vanished as blood spurted, splashing Erik more than the ground beneath them. John laughed.

  “Yes! This is more to my liking, Erik!” John summoned his black sword again, but…it didn’t appear. “What?”

  “I’ve always wanted a sword power. I guess yours is enough for now,” Erik answered, summoning the black sword into his hands, pointing it towards his uncle.

  “That’s new,” John complained, then summoned a blazing hot black flame in his hand. The Titan recognised it as what had killed him once before.

  Erik activated Earthkeep just in time before the black flame washed over him. Rather than being cooked inside the stone armour, Erik shot the debris towards John, the stone already half-melted by then. John jumped back in response to the flaming shards of molten rock, shooting lasers from his eyes at the ones that got too close for comfort.

  A final beam of lasers shot straight at a charging Erik, who deflected it with Soot Edge, the stolen ability’s name. The eye laser hit a hound in its hind, causing it to catch ablaze in a normal-coloured, yet still blazing fire. Combined with the black fire, molten rock, and lasers being flung about in the last few seconds, the ambient temperature had risen to that of a sauna and was still growing warmer.

  Erik caught up to the Warlock, sword ready. He unleashed a flurry of unpracticed, yet quick and precise slashes. The faster man was quick to dodge one, two, three slashes and shot a laser from his eyes over the Titan’s shoulder before he got sliced by the fourth attack.

  The wound didn’t bleed, much like Erik’s own wounds delivered by the black sword, yet this one was the biggest wound scored in the battle yet. More black fire appeared in his uncle’s hand, and Erik jumped away in time to avoid getting hit.

  “Full of surprises, aren’t you? Let’s see you fight these pups, then!” the Warlock said, escaping into the mass of bloodied hounds and canine-like corpses. Loud howls sounded from behind Erik, forcing him to turn his attention that way rather than following his uncle. Two large hounds ran towards Erik with clear intent to kill.

  “Jessie!”

  The moment the fighting broke loose among the hounds, Jessie started loosing spell after spell down the hill. By the third Scorch, she had an idea of which hounds were impacted by Erik’s Authority, as those were fighting in a violent stupor while the normal ones seemed unwilling to fight their own brethren. A weakness of whatever made them act as they did, she was sure.

  Still, they fought back, and their numbers were increasing as more hounds came from the forest behind them. Erik and his uncle broke out in an intense fight.

  Jessie asked Angela and Emma, armed with their magical swords, to stay behind protecting Dunham and Sophie before the Witch flew up into the air to hail down crescents of elemental magic. The occasional hound caught fire while a peppering of others turned to skewers from earthen spikes. The Hellskewers exploded, ripping the hounds apart whilst wounding and maiming the ones nearby with sharp debris.

  Jessie landed to activate Volt Surge on one unfortunate hound. While she was close to the ground, she sent a scythe of cutting water through several others, parting the first few it hit from the rest of their bodies while it left the latter ones with deep gashes.

  The hounds not influenced by Authority targeted her over their own brethren, and several of them jumped at her once she was close enough. She burst away with Jet and slammed the closest grouping with an earthen scythe-shaped mass, crushing the first one’s body by the shattering impact, yet only knocking the other ones several metres away.

  The Witch monitored the hill overlooking the battlefield, making sure Angela and Emma had everything in hand as she flew around. Few Hellhounds seemed to spot them in the chaos, but some were climbing the hills towards them.

  Angela and Emma took full advantage of the high ground they possessed and the simple intelligence the hounds had, cutting them down one by one before they could climb to flat ground.

  Angela, with both a larger build and sword, cut deep gashes in the hounds’ faces and necks, removing a few limbs in the process. There was no need to kill them outright; removing their ability to climb further was more than enough.

  Emma was the poster child for this mentality, as her smaller sword was made for quick cuts rather than deep wounds. Her sword swished as it cut tendons, throats, and even a jaw. With the magic in Mistilteinn enhancing her own agility, Emma was perhaps even deadlier than Angela was, as her victims were more likely to bleed out from the dozens of bleeding cuts rather than the few larger gashes.

  Jessie heard howls belonging to the large hounds approaching from the north, where the reinforcements were coming from. She burst up into the air as Erik called for her.

  Lightning crackled in the air, shooting down like lances of judgement from above at random monsters. Because of the randomness of her Storm field, she had designated even the hounds affected by Authority as targets. She kept closest to the enemy hounds anyway, and she figured even the affected ones would have to die at some point or other.

  Jessie flew in to fling a cutting water scythe into one of the large hounds from point-blank range. The plan to defeat them had ever since Africa been to cause open wounds for Erik’s ‘Entropy’ to take care of them from the inside while they kept wounding them from without.

  Unlike the normal hounds that were cut apart from this scythe at this distance, the large one got cut to the bone. Still, a cut was a cut, and as blood started flowing from the wound, black miasma entered.