Chapter 1203 (2/2)

Then, with all the respect one would treat a trash bag, Vualla lifted up Vion and held him at arm’s length. Still coughing, Abiodun attempted to get up, but that destructive image from Vualla’s punch reigned supreme in his body. It seemed to somehow know every avenue of his Willpower, utilizing his earlier flaw he had created in his image for power in order to paralyze him.

Gritting his teeth, Abiodun forced his body to slowly move. He could tell that Vualla and Vion were talking, but both were speaking so quietly that Abiodun couldn’t make out the words.

If it wasn’t for this damn coughing…! Abiodun’s body trembled with the violence of the exertion to break out of this situation, yet he still remained paralyzed. The image was too strong.

Casually, Vualla threw a punch at the helpless Vion and caved his face in. Then, probably for good measure, she gripped his neck and physically ripped off his head. It came away with a portion of yellowed spine still dangling. Blood splattered down onto the orange dirt. Both the body and the head/spine were tossed in the small grave that Vualla had created earlier, using Vion himself like a pickaxe.

Then, with crimson streams of blood running down off of her heavy gauntlets, Vualla turned and walked back over to Abiodun.

At that moment, Abiodun felt very, very cold. Resolve filled him. Although he didn’t quite understand why Vualla would do this, her decisiveness told him one thing; she wouldn’t want survivors. “Kill me then, you bitch.”

Vualla just chuckled. Then she looked upward and gestured downward, and a little bit of the swirling darkness the grand formation was gathering wove its way down to Abiodun. As it came closer, it seemed to solidify from a strange amorphous feeling into a gas, and then further condense itself to become an inky black liquid that pooled above him.

Very quickly about an ale barrel’s worth of black liquid pulsed slowly above Abiodun’s head. Vualla’s face was in shadow as she looked down toward Abiodun, but he could see the twisted shape of her smile, stretching grotesquely like an old scar across her face. “Why are you so willing to die, Abiodun? Because you’ve finally accomplished your goal…? Or because you know that Lady Iellaya doesn’t need you any longer?”

Abiodun could only cough violently. He wanted to deny what she was saying, but he couldn’t get around the cough to form any words. His tongue was fat and helpless. And there was a dark whisper in the back of Abiodun’s head that was asking the question that he so feared to face. The question that plagued him since Randidly Ghosthound had empowered Lady Iellaya’s Class.

If she still needed you, why are you here?

Vualla’s eyes seemed to glow the dark, murky blue of seas in a storm. “If she still needed you, why are you here?”

With a supreme effort of will, Abiodun pressed down the urgent cough and opened his mouth. Yet all the arguments he wanted to throw out there seemed feeble in the face of the truth that Lady Iellaya had ordered him to come out here and kept that fool Randidly Ghosthound by her side. And in that moment of hesitation, the liquid darkness surged downward and forced itself into his throat.

Choking and gagging on the darkness, Abiodun decisively shut his mouth and felt his body strain to vomit back up the weird liquid. Yet it wiggled around the decisive upheavals of his stomach, working itself deeper into his body. Even worse, his mouth closed, the liquid didn’t stop its attempts. It swirled around, pressing painfully into his tear ducts and ripping its way into Abiodun’s body.

It came for his nose and ears, practically drowning him. All Abiodun felt was a terrible panic and a growing sense of cold. All he wanted to do was scream.

Vualla continued to smile down at him and silently watch.

*****

Lord Miln’s troops charged forward without any trouble whatsoever. Sometimes they needed to shove away Nether Beasts, but often those Nether Beasts were only too happy to launch attacks on their fellows once the Aether soldiers pointed them in the right direction. Very quickly they moved out past the edge of the chaotic combat and reached the badlands, within striking distance of the Great Rift above them.

Lord Miln kept the pace up, and behind him his troops shot forward quickly, aiming to get as close as possible before the Nether responded. And it was clear that the trouble was not just below for the Nether King; in the blue veins remaining above, there seemed to be several different factions that were trying to manage everything at once and were failing pretty equally at everything. The growth of the working had stalled out.

“The formation luckily took a heavy blow.” Ileot grinned upward. “Not flashy, yes… but it would have been hard to shake the Nether King if he had entrenched itself there.”

“What is the function of the formation?” Lord Miln asked curiously as the two continued to lead the rest forward.

Ileot grimaced and wiggled his stubby and hairless fingers. “Partially a buffer, so space won’t collapse just from the weight of the Nether King’s presence. Which aides us, but… in exchange for that buffer, the power of the Nether King is amplified to a ridiculous degree. I have not seen it in person… but those sorts of fixtures become the bases that the Nether has used to take back some of their ancestral lands that we have previously liberated. Such workings are troublesome things, even for someone like me.”

“Truly so powerful?” Lord Miln craned his neck to look up to the complicated formation in the Great Rift above them. Even though several large chunks had been ripped out by Ileot’s abilities, the size was still something that dwarfed the whole of the battlefront. It was a huge mass of squirming blue veins, one that couldn’t be fully grasped without turning and scanning the whole sky.

“Do you have time for idle questions?” Ileot sneered at Lord Miln. “You’re up, bucko.”

Without the benefit of the vein system to aid them, the two figures simply shot rapidly downward out of the Great Rift. But it was clear that these two Nether Heralds were more powerful than the others that had gone to deal with Lady Iellaya.

Huffing lightly, Lord Miln cracked his knuckles. It was all for this. It was time for him to stop hiding and seize his chance.