Chapter 1216 (1/2)
Two events transpired with such a small amount of time between them that they almost seemed connected, although though Lord Miln objectively knew that they were not. But it was clear from both events that there was an almost unspoken agreement across the fraught battle that things were about to change
The first even was that Lord Miln received the first good news he had heard in hours in the form of Ileot’s voice whispering in his ear. “You won’t have to last much longer… I realized the only-... that all I need to do is destroy the Nether King. Then everything’s solved. Buy me some time and I will take care of it.”
The brief and unspoken betrayal that Ileot had obviously committed continued to lay between them, but Lord Miln was at least happy that he now had a goal; buy time. And also he now had a way to achieve his goal of earning merit in this battle.
The second event was that the Nether King hit Lady Iellaya with such violence that she was driven several meters backward. After stabilizing herself, a trail of blood and bile dribbled out of the corner of her mouth. The Nether King roared in triumph.
Perversely, Lord Miln felt a great deal of relief as their frantic struggle against the Nether King took a turn for the worse. When the Nether King now swung its arms, it was able to force Lady Iellaya’s vast wings steadily backward.
Not that Lord Miln left her alone to face this foe; far from it. But the thick liquid that continuously seeped from its body muted the sharpness of Lord Miln’s ambushes and barely slowed the monster as it continued spinning forward to throw a vicious roundhouse kick toward Lady Iellaya’s chest.
Yet despite the growing difficulty in buying Ileot time, Lord Miln still felt relieved. Because the shift in the state of the battle meant that Lady Iellaya was no longer demonstrating power enough that Lord Miln dreaded the battle being over and her attention focusing solely on him.
The Nether King’s roundhouse kick arrived before Lady Iellaya. About ten seconds ago, she had met that sort of blow gallantly and forced the Nether King to a jarring halt. Now, Lady Iellaya’s mouth twisted open in a grimace and she rapidly spun out of the way to avoid the strike. Luckily for her, even if her power was slowly dropping, her speed had not done the same.
OOOooooonnnnggg.
It seemed the Nether King sensed Lady Iellaya’s declining power too because it unleashed a blast of noise that cracked the surrounding ground and had what little of the floating island remained grinding against each other. Body of the powerful Aether users froze for a split second as they struggled to overcome the noise. Then, while one remained at its side, the other three Nether Heralds sprinted out to box Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln into a smaller area.
“Finally run out of gas?” Lord Miln panted, taking a spare moment to wipe blood from his cracked lips. Even he winced at the playful notes in his voice; now wasn’t the time to be flippant in front of the Nether King. Lady Iellaya ignored him, the air around her chilly enough to put out a campfire. But it didn’t escape Lord Miln’s notice that a lot of that frosty intensity had ebbed as the battle had dragged onward; Lady Iellaya couldn’t keep this up much longer.
After all, over the last few minutes of fighting, he had never completely let Lady Iellaya escape his focus. He was extremely wary of some small move that would inconvenience him and put him in danger of a mortal blow. The comment was just another way to test how focused she was on putting up a united front before the Nether King.
...this can be considered barely a pass. Lord Miln thought sourly.
Still, Lord Miln wasn’t a fool. With Lady Iellaya quickly fading, something needed to change if they were to survive this ordeal. Because as of yet, Lord Miln hadn’t earned the merits that he had planned. In fact, he had simply allowed his army to sustain an unbelievable amount of casualties. Even if Ileot did strike soon and force the Nether King to retreat, Lord Miln desperately needed to be a vital part of that effort.
And for all Lady Iellaya’s flaws, she would not lie. If he acted to help pin the Nether King down, she would dutifully report it.
Without a tangible achievement to hold up next to that raw casualty numbers, Lord Miln would be court-martialed without a chance of even defending himself. The Nexus Council wouldn’t care that he had been tricked by Ileot Swacc.
ONG.
This noise was a concerted burst of power, signaling the beginning of the brutal assault from the assembled Nether beings. The three Nether Heralds came like small tornados, their flexible limbs lashing out high and low to limit their mobility. With a surge of momentum that cracked the ground beneath it, the Nether King went directly forward to smash apart the pinned down duo.
Lady Iellaya and Lord Miln exchanged an extremely heavy glance as the forces of Nether rushed toward them. In it, Lady Iellaya expressed some of her doubts that she could handle the Nether King much longer and also barred the naked hatred that she felt toward Lord Miln. Yet she begrudgingly asked for his assistance.
In his glance, Lord Miln allowed that he could help her with the worst of the Nether King and that he had already understood that after this battle, things between them could no longer remain with even the pretense of civility. There would be a reckoning between them.
But they were both beings of Aether. On this, they agreed.
Despite the fact that it was covered in deep wounds, Lady Iellaya’s raven-winged serpent image charged forward, valiantly smashing against the Nether King’s chest. But at this point, the foe of all Aether was a juggernaut that could only be slowed by a small margin by an image projection.
Still, that small margin was enough time for Lord Miln to act. He knew the risks, but Lord Miln decided to trust the plea that he had seen in Lady Iellaya’s heavy glance; now wasn’t the time to hold anything back.
All of the power he had managed to gather during his stint as Supreme Commander was finally let loose. Utilizing all the secrets and tricks he had extracted from the bodies that he kept in his headquarters, he surged into motion animated by foreign Aether. Despite the physical reactions that Nether Heralds possessed, Lord Miln’s violence was so abrupt that the first one that he approached couldn’t bring its guard up in time.
Lord Miln’s hand swerved around the hasty block the Nether Herald threw up with its arm and pierced into its chest. Its exterior was tough, but Lord Miln was no longer holding anything back. His palm impacted the Nether Herald’s core and shattered it in a single blow. Then, even as the Nether Herald continued to spasm on the end of his arm, Lord Miln twisted and threw the limp body of the Nether Herald in the path of the Nether King.
Just need another few fractions of a second, Lord Miln thought as he twisted to find Lady Iellaya literally ripping the last wounded Nether Herald in half. Ichor spattered down her chest and her armor began to steam, making her look like she had been splashed with boiling oil. He didn’t miss how she had moved and exposed her own back to him while they were working together. Lord Miln’s eyes continued forward to the final two Nether Heralds.
On the opposite side, the Nether King couldn’t even help itself; it caught the thrown body clumsily in its thick arms. Whatever liquid formed the outer layer of its body continued to flow downward, quickly encasing the corpse like a coffin of quick drying-cement.
OOOOONNNNNGGGGG.