Chương 27: Spinespear

When Ryland appeared next to the monstrous creature, he found himself physically dwarfed by its titanic proportions. It made sense. He was in front of what was essentially a living mountain. As such, he had to admit, if in a distant manner, that the monstrosity was impressive. This close, he was being battered by the sheer presence of its enormous being. Mana twisted around it, the air rippling and crackling, lightning and ice slamming into him with relentless aggression.

He felt like he was standing next to a sun, except immeasurably cold instead of impossibly hot. A part of him wondered what exactly the Grand Frame classified it as. A mountainous creature that could call upon all the disasters of a wintry mountain range had to rank terribly high. The rest of Ryland was busy casting a spell. This was what he had meant when Alaric had insisted on keeping a low profile. It was these sorts of scenarios where holding back was eminently unreasonable.

Of course, this wasn't true reality, so he didn't need to worry about fatal consequences for failing to act appropriately. Nevertheless, this was a situation that called for power. Power that Ryland had in spades. Power that he didn't get to exhibit because the monster just disappeared." [Mindscape]." Ryland stared as time froze for a minute or so. He found himself smiling internally. Of course. It wasn't enough that the creature was doing its best to play at being some sort of Calamity.

The beast needed the powers of teleportation too. It was almost funny. A gargantuan creature born from a mountain was the last kind of monster he'd have expected to possess the capability of teleportation. Not an issue. He knew what he had to do to take care of this thing. Time resumed its steady pace." [Translocate]." With its original safe location compromised, the monster had decided to take a more hands-on approach to dealing with the pesky mages occupying the Reality Demesne.

It had reappeared far above the spot where the Designated Area was supposed to be. There was an infinitesimal moment where it hung in the air almost comically. Then it surged downwards with the space-rending power of an apocalyptic meteorite, seeking to wipe out not just everything beneath, but everything around it for leagues. Screams went up. Shrieks sliced through the air. Sheer fear had frozen basically everyone on the broken ground.

But the monster's descent jerked to a stop a second after it had begun plummeting. Ryland had reappeared with another rift just underneath, holding up his hand so that the creature was resting on his palm. All its momentum had disappeared entirely. Ryland shook his head. Was this creature truly ignoring him to try and attack his teammates? An Inscribed Glyph of Empowerment glowed in the centre of Ryland's sternum. He had forgotten what Tier it was supposed to be. [18]? [20]?

Honestly, they changed depending on which body he was currently inhabiting, so he often mixed them up. Regardless, it was more than strong enough to hold up the beast above him, which was all that mattered. It felt like the world itself had frozen in surprise. The monster seemed flabbergasted that its mountainous weight, that the obliterating momentum it had been falling with, had evaporated with no consequence whatsoever like mist fogging up a mirror.

Ryland wasn't sure what was going on far below, but everything appeared utterly still. Which was better than utterly destroyed, that was for sure.

"That thing," someone shouted up from the ground.

"It's Mithril-ranked!"

"No," said a faintly familiar voice.

"It-it's growing even stronger." Ryland tutted. The storm was obscuring everything below him, though he supposed he could have used [Omniscience] had it been necessary. But really, Sint of all people should have been aware of the way things kept growing stronger and stronger around him. A quirk of Fate that she herself had witnessed once already.

"A good try," he told the monster above him.

"But off you go." He chucked it away. Sadly, it didn't fly off and strike the distant spot where he had first rifted to. Instead, it teleported again as soon as it was free from his grasp.

"Again?" Ryland said.

"Really? [Translocate]." He rifted as well. And then the monster teleported yet again, disappearing and reappearing a significant distance away. Ryland didn't give chase. He wasn't looking to play a game of tag with his target, so he started thinking of a different tactic. Plus, it had taken itself far away from his teammates, so he wasn't really bothered by its movement. With an ear-splitting roar, the monster unleashed more of its power. It was the same as before.

Thunderous icy lightning filling every bit of space from the broken earth to the cloudy sky. A torrent of freezing rain lashing downwards like a waterfall. Devastating wind tore apart mountains to fling them all at Ryland. An obliterating concoction several degrees worse than what the monster had been visiting upon them earlier. He was almost impressed. Almost." [Concave Nadir]." A spell circle as wide as a field spun vertically in front of Ryland, his Soul Glyph of Aegis forming the Centreglyph.

An inverted dome of magic stretched away from him, spreading wider every moment, capturing all of the destruction that the monster had thrown out. Dragging them all into a single point where Ryland's magic compressed it and held it back. The entirety of the storm covering the vast space between him and the monster, all the power that the supposedly stronger-than-Mithril-ranked threat had pushed out, all of it got drawn into the location designated by his Soul Glyph.

Lightning bent, rain got pulled into rivers, wind and debris formed a horizontal cyclone. Everything was pulled to the impenetrable point created by Ryland's magic. Leaving him perfectly unharmed. When Ryland released the spell, the blowback eradicated the space between him and the enormous, monstrous creature. It ripped across the ground, reducing not just the ground to smithereens, but wiping out the air itself to create a low-pressure zone that led to a subsequent implosion.

The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement. Honestly, Ryland was impressed the monster survived the returning force of its own power. Though, its handy teleportation ability certainly helped in that regard. It had reappeared right on top of him, as if that impossibly mighty storm had been nothing but a distraction. The true attack came in the form of trying to squash him under its immense mass.

Ryland swatted it away, sending it crashing with a series of tremors about a couple of leagues away from him. He arched an eyebrow as it got to its feet pretty quickly despite taking a hit of that nature. From its new position far to his right, it was preparing another salvo to attack him. Ryland smiled. Was this the first real challenge he was facing since returning to Vyrd? Very likely.

While he liked to think of himself as composed and deliberate, moments like these where he had legitimate reason to use the true magic he had painstakingly earned across his life made him feel… almost fulfilled in a way. They made him remember that this was why he had grown strong. The monster fired an icy beam. It fired at Ryland with a speed that put the earlier lightning to shame, a horizontal geyser of energy big enough to swamp all of Arcoryx Academy.

A quick [Translocate] was enough to stop the beam in its tracks. One rift right in front of it to swallow the humongous lasering blast, while another opened up right where the monster was situated. Within the monster. Ryland didn't even need [Omniscience] to observe the fallout. The creature sparked and cracked, bursts of its own icy power emerging from within its depths and freezing over its volcanic maw. Before it disappeared again. Ryland smiled. Smart creature.

It materialized in a wildly different spot, far off to his right this time. The ground broke at its sudden reappearance, the air thundered, condensed magic burst out like a dam breaking. Its icy blast rocketed towards him again, completely ignoring the rifts he had opened up elsewhere. Ryland evaded easily. [Translocate] was there in case he got caught, but really, he just gave his Inscribed Glyphs a bit of a workout.

While he had occasionally seen fit to use his Glyphs of Empowerment and Alacrity, they certainly hadn't needed to unleash their true capabilities for a while till now. Which he had been doing all this while, and it had certainly been nice. But it wasn't like Ryland was selfishly wasting time. After all, his teammates would need some room to find and recover the fence posts to reconstruct the Designated Area.

By keeping the monster's attention focused entirely on him, Ryland was ensuring that the storm's intensity shifted away from his beleaguered teammates and onto him primarily. But he acknowledged that things had gone on for long enough. With the help of his Glyph of Questing and [Omniscience], the next use of [Translocate] took him not to the monster, but to the Glyphs keeping it empowered. It was an extremely heady sensation.

The location of the Glyph of Resonance—which was overlaid with the dark Glyph of Fate—turned out to be the conceptual base of the entire Living Mana dome. In essence, that point was always "down". No matter which direction Ryland came from, no matter if he arrived from above or below or left or right, he always found himself looking at his feet when in search of his targets. This meant that there was an almost ridiculous warping in space that caused everything around to look tremendously twisted.

The idea of perspective essentially lost all meaning while he was so close to the Glyphs. Ryland's intent wasn't complicated or difficult. To remove the deleterious effect of Fate, all he had to do was exorcise it. The idea was simple—cast his Tier [19] Glyph of Exorcism. It was trying to protect itself, of course. The air around the combination of Glyphs was incredibly aggressive, condensed with so much magic that it felt as though space itself was compressing in on Ryland.

Icy lightning, freezing rain, and ripping wind cold enough to cause permafrost assaulted him with relentless intensity. None of which even scratched his barrier. [Oneself World] was made to protect its target against a vast variety of danger. Storms of impossible ferocity, impacts stronger than meteor strikes, pressures high enough to grind metal to powder. The list went on. Naturally, the danger presented by his current obstacles completely failed to match the scale of what his spell could stand against.

Which should have made counteracting the enemy Glyphs quite easy. But the execution got a bit complicated with the monster arriving at the scene, determined to not be ignored. Ryland shook his head. After all, he was just giving it a taste of its own medicine. Had it not tried to ignore him in favour of attacking his teammates just moments ago? The strange perspective shift basically made repelling the creature even easier than it was normally. Its enormous weight sought to strike down from above.

Ryland merely rifted away to a spot above it, letting the creature's weight crash into the very Glyphs keeping it going. Except, the monster just ate the Glyphs. Hmm. Well, that was a little unexpected. Especially since it didn't seem to be affecting the Glyphs' power in any meaningful way. The storm didn't abate in ferocity. The number of lightning bolts and freezing pellets of rain striking Ryland didn't decrease. If anything, they redoubled in ferocity. Ryland sighed. It really was time to end this."

[Dimension Lock]." His lip almost curled in displeasure as the spell circle formed in the air, his Soul Glyph of Rift forming the Centreglyph. But where he normally used his Soul Glyph to create rents in spacetime leading to and from wherever he wished, this time, he used it to lock down any reality-breaking movement whatsoever for his target. Really, he should have started the whole fight with it. He had just felt like getting some exercise out of the encounter.

Not to mention that whenever he used the spell, he was reminded of the terrible circumstances when he had acquired it. Ryland suppressed a shudder. The monster cried out. It was struggling against the binding whorls of cosmic darkness keeping it trapped to one location, frozen in spacetime. The monster was far too cumbersome to move normally, so teleportation had turned into its go-to move. Which made it very easy to counter.

"Your efforts were valiant, but let us end this now," Ryland said. His manasoul turned incandescent, mana churning into an apocalypse." [Dragongod's Spinespear]." Reality was sundered as the spell came into being. The magical pressure emanating from Ryland made the entire Reality Demesne start to shake and crack apart. With a flood of cracks, a rift the size of a small sea opened over the entire broken battlefield.

From within its dark depths, the farthest end of a spine big enough to wrap around a moon speared out and upwards, dwarfing the surrounding mountains.

Its tapered, pointed end stabbed into the monster's underbelly and immediately impaled it into the atmosphere. Ryland was buffeted by a powerful gust and a shift in the very environment. Far overhead, the Reality Demesne splintered as it tried to accommodate the gargantuan intrusion. Even as the cataclysmic spell took effect, he followed it up with a Glyph of Exorcism.

Scarlet energy coruscated along the bone-white spine's length, almost fracturing reality further just as the rifts were doing, turning the world lurid red with flashes of crimson lightning. The monster's subsequent scream made the very air shiver. It had been taken so high up into the air, Ryland didn't get to see how exactly its body was disintegrating under his spell's effect. Nevertheless, he did use [Omniscience] once more just to check that the real problem was dealt with.

The Glyph of Resonance that Kendren had originally spotted was cracking. In fact, the whole spell circle around it was breaking apart. The black Glyph of Fate was gone entirely, exorcised away from affecting the Reality Demesne. [Achievement Recognized: Titanic Triumph You have defeated a Titan-ranked Colossal Winterbeast despite being merely Silver-ranked. Reward: Rank up from Silver [90] to Gold [13]. Reward: 210 Glyph Prints. Achievement absorbed by Manasoul Archetype [???].] Ryland smiled with a soft sigh.

Then, with red light shining hellishly upon him, he rifted back to his teammates. Who had successfully recovered all the fenceposts. And not just them, but several other teams as well. It was nice to see that they had all been working together. Even the team with Flitchard in it. Ryland clapped his hands together with a smile.

"Good work! Now we simply need to wait till the timer ends." They all just stared at him.