Chapter 1202 (1/2)

Lord Miln glanced at the giggling form of Ileot.

Ileot Swacc grinned at Lord Miln, his glee obvious. “Can you handle the two remaining Nether Heralds? Now is not the time for hubris.”

“I’m confident in my capabilities.” Lord Miln said without any sort of enmity. He understood very well how important this portion of the plan would be. And also, it was somewhat gratifying to see that Ileot shared his excitement for what was to come.

Everything for this moment. Every sacrifice, every drop of sweat… everything to create this opening.

“Then we began,” Ileot whispered in his high pitched voice. He raised his hands like a music conductor, slowly drawing them through the air in short, circular motions. Although the movements appeared casual, his fingertips left trails of silvery light in their wake. When a strange, circular sigil was completed, a strange pulse echoed outward.

The veil that Ileot had maintained for the past several months was ripped violently away. There was a heartbeat of silence as the surrounding area grasped the change. Then, while everything around him was still, Ileot chuckled.

Almost instantly, the right flank of the Aether forces descended into chaos.

With a small smile, Lord Miln watched half of the Nether Beasts go wild, turning on their companions in their rampage. Above, a flicker went through the blue veins that hung in the Great Rift. A split second afterward, fully one-third of the blue veins above went dark, leaving huge gaps in the grand working being made for the Nether King.

Ileot pouted as he considered the change in the Great Rift. “I had hoped it would be more splashy than that.”

“It’s just enough.” Lord Miln gestured sharply. “Time to head out.”

*****

Randidly’s pace was not fast, but that was not really because he was so exhausted that he couldn’t move well. And even if he was, Acri would have been only too happy to use its newfound size to act as a mount.

Randidly kept his gait even because there wasn’t a need to move faster than was comfortable. Although, he couldn’t deny how near he was to being forced to rely on Acri. No, the reason Randidly moved so slow was that his attention was split in several directions, and he didn’t want to miss developments in even one of the situations.

Most easily for his attention, he tried to assist the average soldier in the area. Randidly moved back toward the basecamp of Lady Iellaya’s forces, issuing orders for all of the assembled forces, even the reinforcements that had just been standing in front of the fort, to retreat back inside. With all the losses they had experienced, the numbers wouldn’t be a problem. And the fort was a much more defensible location that simply hanging around the field fortifications.

Randidly had been rather worried whether the reinforcement troops would obey him, someone how really didn’t have any official rank in Lady Iellaya’s camp, but honestly, most people seemed more than happy to believe he was a leader and were dutifully trooping back to cover.

Perhaps they just liked the order to retreat, Randidly thought with a wry smile.

Another portion of Randidly’s attention was on Lady Iellaya’s battle, where the pressure she placed on her Nether Herald rose sharply after discarding all pretenses. Her tail and teeth slashed back and forth, constantly seeking to find a flaw in the Nether Herald’s slippery defense. If she couldn’t wound this singular Herald now, she certainly wouldn’t have a chance to do so when there were four working in concert.

Yet it was the third bit of his attention, focused on the three Nether Heralds that were hurrying over, that were the most stressful. Randidly burned through the remainder of his Mana to throw vines and flames up to strike and distract them, but it barely slowed them down at all. Since there were three of them, they could simply rip their way through basically anything that Randidly had to throw at them. Their bodies were powerful enough that it would take quite a lot for Randidly’s Skills to do much without a heavy image, and Randidly didn’t have that sort of juice right now.

Yet suddenly a new sensation distracted Randidly. A strange tremor ran throughout the battlefield. Looking up sharply, Randidly’s gaze turning toward the Aether Headquarters.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 178!

...what the hell was that? Randidly frowned. Ileot…? Or even Lord Miln…?

The passing energy had been significant enough that Randidly had noticed it, but it had passed quickly enough that he couldn’t sense what the function of that energy was. It hadn’t engaged with him or his energy at all. So instantly, Randidly paused in his observation of the three original things and devoted himself solely to watching for repercussions for this energy pulse.

It didn’t take long to notice what was impacted; some of the Aether reinforcements immediately turned listless and distracted. They stopped in the walk, falling to their knees even when their companions urged them forward. Luckily, it seemed it was a relatively small percentage that was affected, mostly those walking at the edges of their formation.

Yet Randidly’s gaze focused again on the rocky outcropping after he discovered the effect. But why would they weaken our forces now…? Do they intend… to sacrifice us…?

Randidly’s Grim Intuition billowed outward, even as he used every trick he could think of to distract the trio of charging Nether Heralds. What he found on the wider battlefield was even more confusing that his initial impression of the results of that energy. It wasn’t just Lady Iellaya’s reinforcements that were panicking: it was every reinforcement on the battlefield.

Yet that wasn’t the weird part. It was the fact that about half of the Nether Beasts seemed to be behaving strangely too. And instead of becoming apathetic like the Aether forces, these Nether Beasts become positively feral, attacking anyone nearby, even fellow Nether Beasts. In terms of numbers, Lady Iellaya’s camp seemed to be an outlier; perhaps only twenty percent of their reinforcements were behaving strangely.

Was it some sort of mental attack…? Randidly couldn’t figure it out.