BOOOOOOOM!

A shockwave of lightning erupted from the crystal, rippling outward in a massive blinding circle.

The electrical discharge caught the wet bloody mud and surged violently into the pack of flanking beasts.

Dozens of mutated hounds and heavy-plated crawlers were instantly electrocuted.

Their bodies convulsed wildly with their nervous systems completely overridden by the raw elemental fury, before they collapsed into smoking heaps of charred fur, boiled blood, and shattered bone.

The smell of burnt meat was suffocating.

Rowena stood at the edge of the smoking mud with her chest heaving as she gasped for breath.

"Haah... Haah... I did it..."

The blinding white light on her Tier 3 Arcane-Weave Scepter slowly dimmed, receding back into its dormant deep-purple hum.

The remaining beasts of the flanking pack scrambled backward with their primal frenzy shattered.

They let out terrified, high-pitched whimpers as they fled from the delicate spellcaster who had just annihilated their assault line single-handedly...

She slowly turned her head with her hair clinging to her damp forehead, looking up toward the Blood-Iron Watchtower.

Silas was standing on the elevated ramparts with his dark combat robes whipping aggressively in the biting morning wind.

He looked down at the massive, twitching corpse of the Siege-Beetle Mini-Boss, then at the charred pack of lesser beasts, and finally locked his piercing blue eyes directly onto Rowena.

The corner of his mouth twitched upward into a smile of approval as he simply gave her a single nod.

Thump!

Rowena’s heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird.

A fierce rush of pride flooded her veins, chasing away the cold. Her pale cheeks flushed a brilliant radiant pink.

She had held the line... She had stepped out of the background, proving her worth in blood and magic and she had earned his gaze once again but the brief, intoxicating moment of victory was violently interrupted.

THUD!

The ground beneath their boots shook once more.

It wasn’t the scrambling of the horde but once again, it was a massive pounding that rattled the very foundations of the steel walls and sent ripples through the puddles of dark blood.

THUD!

The lesser horde had finally thinned out enough for the true threat to close the distance.

The colossal Tier 3 Boss stepped over the smoking craters and the mountains of corpses.

The bipedal giant let out a roar that sent a shockwave of displaced air tearing across the courtyard, blowing out the torches.

It dragged its massive bone-club through the mud, aiming its sickly yellow eyes directly at the heavy steel gates where Brida and Tamsin were holding the line.

’We need to really handle that thing...’ Silas thought.

The battlefield outside the towering steel gates had devolved into a churning swamp of shredded meat, shattered bone, and corrosive black blood.

The Girls had held the line with terrifying grit, throwing back wave after wave of lesser scavengers and Shadow Stalkers.

Tamsin’s spinning chains had created a thirty-foot dead zone, and Aeliana’s starlight beams had punched holes through the densest armor but the Gore-Tide was an ocean without a shore.

The lesser beasts had served their grim purpose, acting as a suicidal meat-shield to absorb the Watchtower’s spear fire and exhaust the heavy infantry’s relentless spear thrusts.

Now, the true nightmare of the Umbral Basin closed the distance...

SKRRRCH!

The jagged bone-mace carved a deep trench in the earth as it moved.

The beast locked its sickly yellow eyes on the open gates of the Blessed Land, fixating on the iron-clad women who dared to defy the basin’s endless hunger.

"RAHHHHHH!

It let out a wet roar that physically rattled the massive black plates of the steel palisade.

Raising the colossal leviathan-spine mace high into the bruising gray sky, the Gore-Fiend brought the weapon crashing down with a brutal, sweeping strike aimed directly at the earth just yards away from Brida’s shield wall.

The impact was devastating.

KRA-DOOM!

The bedrock beneath the deep mud violently shattered. A massive shockwave of displaced dirt, jagged rock, and corrosive blood exploded outward, crashing into the frontline Shieldmaidens like a physical tidal wave.

"Brace!" Brida screamed with her voice tearing from her throat.

She grunted, her heavy iron boots sliding backward in the sludge carving twin tracks in the mud.

She drove her heavy shoulder directly into the center of her tower shield, digging her heels deep into the earth to stay upright, but the metal groaned in agony under the concussive force.

The shockwave bypassed the armor, rattling her bones.

The girls flanking her were knocked to their knees, their arms trembling with the flawless overlapping formation buckling for the very first time since the siege began.

Standing on the elevated metal rampart directly above the gates, Silas watched the iron wall stagger.

The Gore-Fiend raised its leviathan-spine mace again with its muscles bulging as it prepared to batter the exposed infantry into the dirt and crush the threshold completely.

He simply turned his head, his dark hair whipping across his brow, looking back over his shoulder toward the towering structure of the Blood-Iron Watchtower.

Seventy feet up in the air, standing directly on the edge of the stone observation deck, Eluned was looking right back down at him.

The biting wind whipped her silver-green dress violently around her legs, exposing her pale skin to the elements but she didn’t look cold.

Her emerald eyes burned with an overwhelming divine power that practically warped the air around her, creating a shimmering halo of green light.

Silas turned his body toward the tower as he raised his right arm, extending his hand upward toward the sky.

"Should we join in?" Silas called out.

Up on the observation deck, a wide grin appeared on Eluned’s flawless face.

It wasn’t the soft flustered smile she reserved for the quiet moments alone in the Keep.

It was far more eager.

She didn’t conjure a staircase of vines to walk down and she didn’t float down gracefully on a cushion of manipulated wind.

Eluned stepped directly off the edge of the seventy-foot stone parapet.

She plummeted toward the stone courtyard like a falling star with the wind roaring in her ears, her dress snapping wildly as gravity took hold.

Silas tracked her rapid descent as he widened his stance, anchoring his heavy iron-plated boots firmly into the metal grating of the rampart, dropping his center of gravity.

His Mythic Gold Core roared to life inside his chest. It flooded his dense muscle fibers with thick golden energy.

His veins ran hot, radiating actual steam in the cold air with his body aggressively bracing to catch the weight of a falling deity.

As Eluned neared the rampart, she reached out, extending her pale hand.

Her delicate fingers brushed against his extended hand.

In a blur of graceful motion mid-air, she pressed her soft lips directly against his armored knuckles.

The contact sparked a catastrophic explosion of power.

A blinding surge of SSS-Rank divine energy ripped through his arm, violently fusing with his own sovereign heat.

The emerald magic twisted around his golden aura like a double helix, creating a terrifying mix of divine mana and his own.

The pressure was so intense that the heavy steel grating beneath his boots screamed and buckled in protest.

"Why not?" Eluned grinned with her eyes flashing brilliantly as gravity pulled her past his level.

Silas didn’t just catch her after that.

He seized the massive, accelerating downward momentum of her fall, grabbing her out of the sky.

"Well then, let’s give you a good entrance my dear Goddess."

Silas gripped her waist tightly with both of his hands, locking her to his center, and pivoted sharply on his right heel.

He moved like an Olympic hammer thrower, converting the massive downward velocity of a falling deity into horizontal force.

One rotation!

Two rotations!

The force whipped Eluned’s silver-green hair into a blinding halo around them as the muscles in Silas’s back, shoulders, and core bulged against his dark combat robes.

The Gold Core pushed his limits to the maximum, reinforcing his skeleton just to handle the extreme pressure of spinning a mass of divine energy.

On the third, violent rotation, Silas locked his gaze on the open gates as he released his grip.

FWOOSH!

Eluned shot through the gap in the massive steel gates like a living siege projectile.

She tore through the cold morning air with her velocity so extreme she broke the sound barrier.

BOOM!

She completely bypassed the struggling shield wall, sailing directly over the heads of the snarling Shadow Stalkers, the armored hounds, and the exhausted heavy infantry but Eluned wasn’t simply a physical projectile.

She was the Spirit of the World Tree.

Mid-air, soaring over the ocean of rotting flesh, Eluned twisted her body with her eyes glowing with blinding emerald light.

She extended both of her hands with her delicate fingers splayed as she used a new spell.

"Purge," she whispered with the divine command echoing in the minds of everything below.

From her fingertips, dozens of hyper-condensed beams of pure life-energy erupted.

BZZZT! KRA-KOW! PCHOO!

The emerald lasers rained down from the sky like a orbital bombardment.

They struck the leaping Shadow Stalkers that were attempting to intercept her flight path, blowing massive holes completely through their void-black torsos.

The divine light acted like acid against the necrotic flesh, turning the corrupted beasts to ash before their bodies even hit the mud.

Eluned cleared her own landing zone within seconds.

She aimed herself squarely at the dead center of the Tide, hurtling right at the massive, stomping feet of the Tier 3 Abyssal Gore-Fiend.

Eluned crashed into the mud.

KRA-BOOM!

The moment her bare feet struck the corrupted earth, the ground violently rebelled against the abyss.

A shockwave of brilliant, blinding green light erupted from the exact point of impact, expanding outward in a massive dome that washed away the gray gloom of the Umbral Basin, replacing the rotting scent of the horde with the smell of crushed pine and blooming life.

The earth tore open!

Massive spikes of divine wood... each the width of a heavy siege battering ram erupted upward from the deep bedrock beneath the mud.

The timber exploded in a massive sprawling radius around her landing zone, splintering the rock and dirt with the deafening sound of grinding tectonic plates.

The wooden spears ripped straight through the bellies, chests, and jaws of dozens of charging Stalkers and heavy-plated hounds.

The divine roots impaled them effortlessly, acting as a massive snare.

The massive spikes hoisted the twitching, bleeding corpses twenty feet into the air, pinning them against the gray sky as their dark blood rained down onto the timber.

"RAHHH?!"

The Tier 3 Boss let out a deafening, panicked screech.

Three massive spikes, thicker than ancient oak trunks, slammed directly into the beast’s chest plating.

The divine wood didn’t pierce the incredibly thick leviathan-bone armor since Eluned didn’t want it too but the force behind the eruption was undeniable.

BOOM!

The impact lifted the twenty-foot behemoth entirely off its feet.

It violently threw the massive creature backward through the air as the Boss crashed heavily into the mud fifty yards away, crushing dozens of its own lesser beasts beneath its massive rotting bulk.

"My Lord, did you see that?!"

The center of the Tide was instantly decimated with their numbers skewered on a sudden forest of jagged timber that had sprouted in a fraction of a second.

Silas didn’t stay on the wall to admire the carnage as he had an execution to carry out.

He vaulted directly over the steel rampart, dropping thirty feet and landing heavily in the mud just outside the open gates.

SQUELCH!

The thick bloody sludge splashed up against his dark combat robes, but his focus was entirely locked on the struggling Boss thrashing in the distance.

He reached over his right shoulder with his leather-clad fingers wrapping around the long hilt protruding from his back.

SHIIIING!

[Tier 3 Umbral Mythril Greatsword]