Chapter 926 (2/2)

Before another individual could shift to cover the swordswoman, Helen thrust her harpoon forward. Decimate.

Blood covered energy gathered around the strike and empowered it. Although the sword was able to score a glancing blow on the harpoon, it wasn’t enough to block it entirely. The strike slid into the swordswoman’s belly, the wickedly curved hook ripping through her intestines.

Helen grimaced despite herself. If a healer doesn’t get to that quickly, you are going to die. And it will be fucking horrible.

Unfortunately, the other Squaders moved more quickly than Helen would have guessed, even as her Domain tugged at them. An ax cracked into her shoulder and made her stumble forward. To warriors like this, that was more than enough of a chance. A blast of heat singled a fire Skill had passed a bit too close for comfort as well. Helen swung around, adjusting her balance.

Two more individuals wielding spears stepped forward and thrust toward Helen’s sides. With ripping motion, Helen attempted to yank her harpoon out of the swordswoman’s stomach. But as Helen looked, it seemed like a strange liquid copper had bubbled out of her wound, holding the harpoon in her body.

Lightning fast, Helen released her Fate and recondensed it, feeling a blast of mental wariness to control it so quickly. But it allowed Helen to parry one of the spear thrusts and knock it into the other rather uninspired attack.

Spinning around, Helen barely avoided another volley of needles from the pseudo-archer, who now produced several daggers and rushed toward her. But what she saw behind her gave her pause. The Swordswoman was still standing there, now wreathed in molten copper. As Helen watched, a conical helmet formed, leaving a small slit for vision.

The slit began to glow red.

But Helen couldn’t puzzle over this for long. Strikes rained down toward her from every direction, forcing her to dance to the side. Several long scrapes on her arms marked how elusive she really was, but Helen felt her mood dip.

These people are too strong to play like this for long.

Helen did not hold back and slipped along the lines of attacks and slashed at several lightly armored individuals with her scaling knife. The wounds might not be deep, but they would bleed heavily.

As they attempted to surround Helen, her attacks became increasingly violent. Every other attack was a Decimate, which consumed a lot of her Stamina but rapidly led to the other side pausing before they stepped into her range.

It was possible to withstand her normal attacks, but the Decimates continued to keep them on their toes.

The battle should have begun to shift toward Helen as she made use of the energy she had gathered with her Domain, but actually the opposite began to happen. Most troublesome of all, all those who Helen had wounded soon were standing, covered in that same liquid copper armor. Copper weapons flowed out of their hands, and they moved with renewed vigor to cut her down. The copper-covered warriors seemed to attack in the same patterns, but the moved more quickly than they had previously.

Was this a shared Skill they all had, because-

Helen’s harpoon smashed into the shoulder of one of the armored copper zealots. Unfortunately, the tip left a deep scratch but didn’t pierce through. Slowly, the flaw in the armor healed. Within ten seconds, it was like she had done nothing at all. More and more strikes rained down around her, and Helen stretched her Domain to the limit to avoid the worst of it.

If it continued like this-

Like a hand passing through a cobweb, Helen’s Domain was blown away. A strange wind howled, shaking the air. Everyone froze and turned their gaze upward. It was demanded. Instinct took over.

Towering over them all was a tree that stretched upward through the sky. Its branches wound up rough the clouds, holding them aloft. Beyond that was space, where the twisting tendrils extended infinitely, so far beyond the edge of an individual’s vision that it seemed endless.

The deep brown of the bark was so old that Helen’s mouth dried as she looked upward at it. The weight of time’s passage lay heavy over the air. For those without a high level of Strength, even breathing was difficult before this tree. The emerald leaves rustled, the noise clearly carrying to her ear even though the foliage appeared to be kilometers away. It was like hearing the breath of a different world.

As the tree slowly grew more vivid and defined, the surrounding world dimmed. The universe groaned as it was forced to revolve around the tree. Sun and moon spun slowly, obediently orbiting it. Warm, fire red light on its one hand, cool blue silver on the other. Between it, the tree acted as the fulcrum for the warping of space.

And across the whole of the tree, small spinning lines of gold-covered every inch of it. From a distance, it simply appeared that the tree had been liberally dosed with golden glitter. But as one examined the tree with more focus, suddenly it was clear that the strange geass of the tree seemed to flow through these letterings.

What truths those letters conveyed were then born out into reality. Such was the tree’s power.

So it is written, so it shall be.

“If it’s come to this…” Randidly said easily, raising his hand and looking at his fingers. His voice was that breath of a distant world, seeming to boom with force while simultaneously being whispered to all who witnessed this phenomenon. “Then let’s no longer hold back.”

Around her, the powerful Squads began to stir as they fought off the passive influence of the tree. But Randidly’s gaze shifted down toward the body of Eli, who continued to bleed onto the cold stone ground. Randidly grinned. “Interesting; that Skill improves the more damage you’ve taken, doesn’t it? A support Skill to provide copper armor to your allies… But… is that flimsy barrier really enough?”

Above the tree there was suddenly a Crown. It was simple and austere, a woven thing of bone and metal and darkness. The air shifted and the writing across the tree shifted and rewrote itself. The tree demanded fealty.

This time when the leaves rustled, it sounded like a dull roar. And all who witnessed that Crown began to tremble and suffer.