The one mistake, of the many the Empire could afford to make, reared its ugly head then. The Empire"s army focusing on the Deathbringers, on the surface, was the logical move to make. The Particles, clearly the greater threat, numbered only two—to their knowledge—and could be dealt with more easily when isolated. This meant that their primary choice of target was the Deathbringers. Surely, to the surprise of the enemy commander, the Deathbringers showing no ability to move themselves through s.p.a.ce in a supernatural matter was a welcome sign. It meant that a more mobile force—something the Empire had—could easily trap and destroy them.Just as the second cavalry unit was about to approach to within fifty meters of the Deathbringers and complete the pincer, the Particles made their move.
When Somnus built the machine spiders, he gave them several abilities by engraving the spell circles on the Orichalc.u.m and Argentmetal plating of their armor. One of those abilities was [Voidwalk]. It was similar to Somnus"s [Whisperwalk], but without the ability to a.n.a.lyze how skills work, Somnus used a different medium to move the spiders through. He initially named this medium Nulls.p.a.ce, but settled on the name "Void" after his experiments with Hashmal went wrong.
Because of the danger involved—namely Hashmal disappearing into the Void—he never tested whether or not the two spiders could use the ability. But now he had witnessed the result.
Baryon and Photon faded out from reality, as their bodies burned like blue embers from the mana coursing through their channels in the outer layer of armor. Somnus did not see any movement lines that would be present when someone was using mobility skills like [Whisperwalk]. It was as if the spiders never even moved. Yet, it was an undeniable fact that they appeared several hundred meters ahead.
This goes all the way back to the theory behind the Void, and why Somnus named it Nulls.p.a.ce in the first place. The Void was an imaginary s.p.a.ce with no... s.p.a.ce. Any point could connect to any other point, so long as its coordinates could be found. Within the sea of possibilities, a path could be found, and the s.p.a.ce between could be bridged. In effect, the user of the skill would never move, and in theory would also exist in all places simultaneously, eventually settling on the one possibility—their destination.
Whether the latter half of that theory was true or not, Somnus could not verify. However, to Somnus it looked as if the spiders truly never moved. What sort of mechanism allowed the spiders to bridge that s.p.a.ce through the Void was also unknown, but they did exactly that.
At the moment they appeared, their armor glowed with a renewed brightness. Baryon created a magical circle in front of Photon which solidified instantly. Photon gathered the magical energies into his own magical Arrays. A shock wave followed, blasting the ground beneath the spider apart as a brilliant white beam lanced forwards and struck Baryon"s spell formation. The beam then split into hundreds of smaller ones and rained upon the cavalry charging on the left flank of the Deathbringers.
The unit was instantly wiped out—vaporized out of existence. Photon"s spell was one of the offensive Arrays that Somnus granted it; It was called [Galaxy Beam]. It contained the elements of Void—not to be confused with Nulls.p.a.ce—Fire and Light. Somnus thought that being struck by a beam made of vacuum, radiation and incinerating light was akin to being bombarded by gamma ray radiation, while naked in s.p.a.ce, close to the galaxy core. It turns out that theory was correct.
The ground seemed more poisoned than burned, except in the few places where the beams had impacted directly—in those places the ground was molten and carved. The chaotic interaction of the smaller beams pus.h.i.+ng each other away due to their charge made the personnel-suppression spell unpredictable but very effective. It was akin to a directed energy shotgun, with the glowing pellets taking strange circular routes, leaving nothing but stardust in their wake.
Those who were hit by the beams, and were not incinerated by their mere presence, literally exploded as all the water in their bodies converted into steam. They were the fortunate ones. The rest died horrible deaths, but at least it was a relatively quick one.
Somnus, in his old body, rarely used laser weapons against "soft targets," as he called humans, but he witnessed the same effect before. In truth, it wasn"t as messy as using sonic weapons, which he used against soft targets quite frequently.
A pang of nostalgia gnawed on Somnus"s mind as he remembered those times, followed by disappointment. A few megawatts of heat, and this was the result, yet this race thought itself worthy enough to conquer s.p.a.ce. Somnus never found out, in all the centuries of his existence, what it was that gave humans such hubris. It was the same hubris that ushered his existence into the world, so he could not fault them for it too much. But in Somnus"s eyes, he saw this as only proof of humanity"s desire for self-annihilation.
The two mechanized spiders working together did not surprise Somnus at all. This was exactly why he had two of them. Individually, they were extremely powerful, but together they could make use of something similar to Somnus"s [Sequence Cast], which allowed him to prepare multiple spells within one spell circle.
Before Somnus merged with Aeon, the Particles had a Realization Area that was on par with Somnus"s. In hindsight, it may actually have been even greater than Somnus"s. In essence, they could create larger spell circles than Somnus could, but Somnus never saw them cast any spells. Every ability they displayed so far, and during testing, came from the Arrays Somnus inscribed on them, which were compressed and pre-solved spell formations.
In the act of spell-casting, solving a magical circle into a spell formation was a unique process each time the spell was cast, which meant that spell formations could not be reused. Spell Arrays, however, were automated and already equipped with the tools to decrypt the Information Dimension and cast the spell, without ever constructing a spell formation. The only thing they required was mana, and the only downside was that they could not be as complex due to the limited s.p.a.ce available.
In that regard, the Realization area was only limited to the area of the magical material the Array exists on, and the ability of the engraving mage to compress the spell circle.
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Thus, it was a complete waste for the Particles to have such an awesomely large Realize Area, but never utilize it. With the pure mana from their Mana Reactor, each one, on their own, could lay waste to an entire country.
What surprised and alarmed Somnus, and was possibly the reason why the Particles had their threat level elevate by two, was the fact that Photon"s [Galaxy Beam] struck a Spell Formation.
Had Baryon used his spell Array, Somnus would never see a spell Formation. The beam would have seemingly struck nothing and burst into hundreds of smaller beams. In other words, Baryon was using his Realize Area, and not his Arrays. Even more interestingly, Baryon could understand the Array and translate it into a Formation—a skill similar to Somnus"s [Magic Eyes].
Somnus found himself comparing his own strength to that of the Particles, wondering if perhaps he had created something that was going to be his own destruction some day. Had he, in his own foolishness, created what he was to humanity in his own world?
Somnus chuckled. Of course not. Even though Somnus was Threat Level 10, that gap between 9 and 10 was like heaven and earth. They were incomparable.
However, if Hashmal could do the same thing as the machine spiders…
Somnus clicked his tongue. There was no point in worrying about something that would reduce the world to nothing but dust.
The Deathbringers and Ashborn Knights had finally, by that time, reduced the other cavalry unit to one third of its original strength. Cohesion was so low that one half of the remaining hors.e.m.e.n began to flee, while the other stubbornly advanced.
No matter how that cavalry unit tried to ignore the Ashborn in their midst and go around them, the latter seemed to appear in their path every time. They travelled through their now rather sizable shrouds of ash, effortlessly. With each enemy they felled, their shroud grew by absorbing the corpse. The enemy cavalry found that ordinary weapons could not harm the Ashborn, nor could they be avoided. They paid for every inch they gained with a river of blood.
Still, more soldiers appeared out of the smoke. Three separate units of infantry, each from their own direction. The enemy would not give up on destroying the Deathbringers, even though the Particles were right there, and had displayed some—a tiny fraction—of their true power.
Somnus pitied the enemy commander who was so focused on his objective that he failed to adapt to the situation.
Then the sky seemed to open up, the dark clouds cleaved apart as if a ma.s.sive sword just went through them. In the darkness, Somnus could not see it, but he could feel it. He felt a black halo around a female figure and the disappearing black hole that brought her to this place. It was not just Somnus that felt it. Everyone did. It was not so much a magical effect, as it was something closely tied to the Divinities of this world.
"Aurora," Somnus said.