The Ogre Strength Fairy and the Eldest 'Son'-Chapter 316 - Harvesting Lives & Pulling Hearts To A Kiss... Of Speechless Steel
Chapter 316: Chapter 316 - Harvesting Lives & Pulling Hearts To A Kiss... Of Speechless Steel
Pigeon blue eyes, slightly narrowed from pain, darted between the vantablack creature and Kefa’s prone form. The intelligence was evident in how it maneuvered... trying to separate her from her fallen comrade with every step and forced parry. Sensory flames flickered as it assessed her reactions.
Sized closer to her fist than the points on the smaller creatures. Also unlike its lesser kin, it showed no mindless aggression with each move. Only calculated attacks that made the fight more like dueling another cultivator than anything else.
Her Cynosure Physique remained muted even as she tried to rally her physical energy toward her skin like before - suggesting the leader-class had more control over its response to the taunt than the lesser Voidlings. Making it lose its ’cool’ may have been a simpler way to draw it into a more direct fight. Already, the bit of damage she’d accomplished was closing and ’healing’.
The tip of the severed limb forming a new talon.
"Can you only go after the helpless?"
Qat’s low voice spoke to break the momentary standoff. It leaned what passed for its head forward. The intensity of six flaming eyes seemed like a distraction as another wave of appendages twisted and lashed from multiple directions.
Two limbs were swept through by a sharp edged blade while ducking under the sneakier third. In a way, it reminded her of fighting the meteor hammer wielder, Aleck. Or rather, fighting two or three of him at once.
The large Voidling screeched as more of its essence dispersed into the air. Its essence field tried to seal off the wounds... but a Yecine was trained to be aggressive for a reason. A Weighted arc that would have been devastating to the eldritch being’s center mass missed by a hair.
Impossible seeming fluidity drew more of its form away at speed. Qat pressed again for advantage, advancing with a spear-like stab. A pivoting slash. Shoulder charge with an upward swing.
Controlled violence, each strike designed to push the Leader away from where Kefa lay unconscious. The Voidling recognized her intent and resisted being pushed away. Its movements became increasingly erratic as it sought to trick her into making a mistake and letting it pass.
It had no true hope of coming out alive, but its primary directive could still be achieved if it could simply slay the ’weakest’. Alone, all the creature had to cling to was its purpose. And it knew of humans... that a failure to accomplish their goals was just as frightening.
Only, the bipedal, single-mind creatures were much more sensitive to tasks being unfulfilled. They let it affect the ’next time’ in ways that were less than logical. They deviated from their original aim entirely instead of only realigning the path to accomplishing it.
The voice that had entered its head before had provided no intent or instruction about the one already on the ground. The invasion leader calculated that the best way to permanently test and affect the cultivator it was fighting was by denying their goal. The woman’s intent to guard the other one was so clear.
But the enemy too, was rather clear. Especially to one of the rare cultivators in this era who regularly practiced reading foreign feeling expressions of spiritual energy. Like her wife’s Illusion Astralism, the Hivemind was spread out thinly like a cloud.
Her tendrils of spirit, some coiled around her blade, some pointed in lines waiting to use her Gravity techniques... could read the general idea of what the creature had planned.
"I won’t let you."
The Yecine’s voice held steady determination that had been forged through years of training, through recent success... and an unfaltering belief that Elua would not be staying out if it if she was not capable of handling things. A flesh wound on her arm was only a minor distraction.
She accelerated her assault, the long and thick blade moving with unlikely speed as she channeled more energy into every action. In response, vantablack Void suddenly compressed into a spikey ball that exploded outwards.
Qat was already bracing herself while forcing all of her essence into the front of her field before it struck. Spikes lost their form while traveling through the countering energy, turning what would have made her a pincushion into simply being battered backwards.
Twice she tumbled on the ground end over end from the force before successfully catching the fall. When the Yecine shot her gaze where the creature should be - it was gone. Her head methodically shifted to examine the whole of the clearing.
Kefa, who remained unconscious but alive, was still where she had been left. The scout lay face-down nearby her, unnaturally still. Her wife had no need to make it move, it seemed. But some movement did catch her attention.
The invasion leader had somehow ended high up the quarry wall and now perched against it. That trump card attack to skewer a close up combatant was also used to launch itself high and far - to escape battle or scale fortress walls. Sometimes even to cross large gaps, when the illogical humans destroyed bridges to keep it away.
Its form rippled inward again as it gathered itself for another assault. The six usual limbs multiplied beyond their previous number, becoming a writhing mass of eldritch nothingness. Nothingness shaped into tearing, rending, and primal curved claws.
Qat stood her ground while raising the tip of her blade at the creature who was not paying her any attention. The center of its mass had joined into a single blazing ball of white, aimed at the twin-blade wielder. With someone to protect - who she knew that Elua may not save - her Cynosure ignited to full strength.
To the swordswoman it felt like that very ’fire’ it sensed with now spread directly across her skin as the leader’s attention finally locked onto her completely.
"That’s it. Focus on me."
To Elua watching nearby, black tendrils of Void was about to meet the shining bright tendrils of her beloved. Etching the whole scene into memory, the ’medical fairy’ moved a few times into position. She could not be the only one that would enjoy the moment.
When the creature lunged off of the wall of natural stone, Gravity surged along the tendrils. Catching each nightmare of tentacular horror and squishing them together. Then just before its momentum could send it careening into the Yecine...
She pulled with all her energy in a single burst.
Its form directly slung ’itself’ onto the waiting edge of her blade. The senselessly sharp cutting weapon cleaved deep into its body, black ichor erupting from the wound and the slice into its core organ. A shriek unlike anything Qat had heard before tore through the air.
The hundreds of lesser Voidlings calling all at once had nothing on the single, alone, failing completely greater member of the invasion force. Thrashing wildly with the now freed limbs. Flailing in pain and a rage that could only be understood as existential.
Wrapping multiple appendages around Qat despite the further damage this caused to its own form. The blade sunk deeper even as pressure against her body intensified. It tried to crush the one before it. The one making it act unlike itself.
But even though it knew, somewhere inside, that it was being manipulated...
\~ Thank you for trying your best. It has helped her. Goodbye ~\
With a roar of effort, Qatrand er Yecine wrenched her familial style weapon in a downward motion. Finding some unexpected reserve of strength, it further tore apart the vital piece animating the Voidling.
Immediately, its form convulsed and lost all ’strength’. What had become a head sized fire snuffed out as vantablack collapsed into a gelatinous pile. Qat staggered backward from it, retreating and breathing heavily as she watched the creature’s demise.
Watched one of the sources of mortals and cultivators losing their lives every eighteen years lose its existence. Void drew inward as some of it dispersed into the surrounding air like smoke. A final miasma for the weak and uninitiated.
Poisoning the location of its death with its abhorrent essence. A bitter revenge on the existence of the material plane.
Tremors of exhaustion ran through the arms of the raven haired cultivator. Her skin felt tender as it cooled down, freed from its side effect of Cynosure. Her face moved toward the one she’d been able to protect directly.
Kefa had crawled to her hands and knees at some point. The older woman had been ’allowed’ to watch the end of the fight - in no small part thanks to a certain heiress spiritually kicking her ’awake’. She was honestly... speechless.
And not simply because she was still shaken from the Hivemind interference.
Not far beside her, the illusory form of the scout had mysteriously sprouted very fatal looking wounds. The stony clearing altogether had a bit more *damage* than when they arrived. The Rending power of the eldritch entity leaving tears and gouges in the earth.
Including a little more than there ’literally’ was around the supposed ’Whispering Winds’ member.
’Now my temporary persona is dead - and whether the body is here or not when the area is later investigated? Who will care that much about a single ’probable’ member of the conspirators... when everyone is talking about my Qat with well deserved reverence~’
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