Chapter 1110 (2/2)

Her will descended and the visual cues of the surrounding area stilled for a split second as the weight of her Willpower simply overwhelmed the instability caused by Nether. A gauntlet shot forward. The Nether Beast was eradicated to nothing, along with its two companions that followed along behind it.

Even if the surrounding area was now clear, Nether Beasts continued to steadily march forward toward the overworked defensive line around the camp. After the Nether Beasts in front of her disappeared, Vualla huffed out a breath and turned to a Nether Beast that was clamoring up of the rocky terrain to attack the camp.

After a brief hesitation, Vualla raised her fist and marshaled her will once more. But instead of using the focus that Cail Tweocs recommend she use, Vualla tried something else. Protect.

She punched. The Nether Beast staggered, but it quickly regained its posture and continued to scuttle toward Vualla. Frowning, she tried again. The shape of the desire was awkward, but Vualla put everything she had behind it.

We are connected, Randidly.

This time a huge chunk was taken out of the Nether Beast’s shoulder. Her will had come together well, but it was still insufficient to cut. Vualla punched again and put the Nether Beast out of its misery, then turned fo find another whole beast that she could test her edge against.

I will wait for you.

The top half of the Nether beast seemed to dematerialize before Vualla’s eyes. Its legs continued forward for several steps, then collapsed backward and began to disintegrate. A better result, but still not enough. Still nowhere near as powerful as the raw and dangerous focus of ‘destroy’. Which, Vualla supposed, was why Cail was constantly pushing her toward focusing her mind toward her destructive impulses.

After fifteen more minutes of fighting, Vualla sat down on a cracked and scorched rock and looked out over the battlefield. It wasn’t that the attack had really ended, they were near-constant now, but the bulk of the Nether forces appeared to have died. If the Aether forces wanted to reestablish themselves, they needed to act now.

Fellow soldiers were slowly spreading out across the wrecked ground and began searching for wounded to carry back to the camp proper. Vualla’s gaze shifted back toward the center of camp, where her father continued to frantically command and prepare his camp as wave after wave of Nether Beasts continued to invade.

But even if I have to become a weapon that can only destroy, I at least can remember why it is I need to destroy. And as long as I don’t lose that… Vualla’s features softened and a fragile smile flickered to life on her face. Father… I won’t end up like you. I won’t let people who are important me fade to nothing but memories.

Then the smile was gone and Vualla forced herself to her feet. After almost eight hours of constant fighting, she needed to get to walking so she could make it back to the far side of the front line in time for her daily training session with Cail Tweocs. And although Cail didn’t care how she spent her time away from him, there would be hell to pay if she was even a second late to a training session.

Is the Xyrt Brigade really such a big deal if you have the spare time to stand around and just train one possible recruit for all this time? Vualla thought rather grumpily. And if it's such a big deal… why is it that I’ve never heard of it before? Although everyone I ask about it seems to be aware of it…

Despite her sour attitude, Vualla quickly accelerated to make it back to Commander Terith’s camp in time for the training session. But while she moved, she didn’t stop looking around at the surroundings. Her mouth firmed into a grim line. The most obvious point that was continually reinforced as how disparate the current status of the camps was due to the Nether’s repeated attacks.

The camps on the periphery, her father’s and Lady Iellaya’s, had been constantly inundated by floods of Nether Beasts for the past week or so. To the point that even most of the conservative Commanders set up in the interior of the defensive line were confused by why such a thing was happening. Very rarely did Nether launch ground assaults like this, where they simply sent Nether Beasts to attack camps. Even more rarely while a screening of Aether Keys was in effect.

And perhaps the greatest source of concern was the number of Nether Beasts. It was acknowledged that the Nether Beasts were more numerous than the superior Aether soldiers, but the current flood of beasts was preposterous. It was like Nether had somehow been able to double the size of its army overnight. And at this point, it was just content to spend some of the numerical advantages to whittle down the Aether camps.

Still, from what Cail had told Vualla, Lord Miln had been firm and confident in front of the worried Commanders. And as most of the most grievous losses were away from their camps, the majority supported Lord Miln’s decision to wait out this ‘desperate offensive ploy’.

But Vualla couldn’t support waiting at all. For every life lost at her father’s camp, all Vualla could think of was her brothers walking out and dying on these very same fields. And she had no doubt that her father would think the same thing. Her memory of the man was distant, but she had been always told there was a certain sort of romantic imagination to him. It was by this token that he had won the heart of Vualla’s mother, who was widely agreed to be one of the most beautiful women in the Nexus.

That imagination, combined with her father’s almost savant-like capability to recognize patterns on the battlefield, meant that he would see the scenes of his sons dying would be repeated before his gaze ad nauseum. His heart would be ground slowly down to nothing. After spending so many years refusing to even visit home, Vualla wondered how much her father had left to lose.

Which is why we cannot wait. What we need is the capability to eradicate the Nether. RIght now. Vualla’s eyes burned so brightly that the azure shifted more toward an eery seafoam green. And if I have to become a weapon of destruction to accomplish that, so be it.