Chapter 4564 Ebb and Flow (Part 2)

Luckily for Marnora, the Awakened Council's reinforcements had come prepared to fight Divine Beasts. Their forces were organized into 8-man units: seven Awakened to cast Silverwing's spells and the eighth to recon or replace an injured member of the unit.

The Awakened conjured the Silverwing's Bastion in time to keep their allies from being obliterated by Orpal's low tier Blade Spell, yet it was barely enough.

"Did you think I was here floating high in the sky fiddling my thumbs?" The Dead King's voice drowned out the din of battle like a roar, punctuated by fits of deranged laughter. "Did you vermin dare forget about me?"

The Adamant mace and the Thorn spear were both encased in the Chosen's crystal spear, forming a makeshift Double Edge. Orpal used Thorn as his Blade Weapon, the black prisms as amplifiers, and the mace as an energy source.

He had stayed out of the melee to weave multiple shots of Nascent Sprout and one full Collapsed Moon, keeping them all at the ready for the grand finale.

"Have you forgotten who I am?" What looked like a corona effect of silver lightning bolts grew in power and intensity as he spoke. "I am the immortal Dead King, and you're all dead!"

From the safety of his fortress in Jiera, Orpal and Jorl combined their bloodline abilities to conjure the Griffon technique, Chain Maelstrom.

They took turns emptying their mana organs, using half of the Life Maelstrom they stored to empower themselves and throwing the remaining half at the other in the form of a huge silver lightning bolt.

The Life Maelstrom was absorbed and amplified by the silver lightning already coursing through their bodies, allowing Jorl and Orpal to store the excess energy they exchanged in their mana organs and fill them again.

The Life Maelstrom enhanced not only the two Corrupted Divine Beasts' abilities, but also the amount of world energy they could store inside their bodies. When, a split second later, they shot another bolt of lightning at each other, it was bigger and stronger than the original.

The sparks between the Storm Griffon and the Vurdalak grew in intensity with each cycle. The Life Maelstrom they exchanged soon filled even their boosted mana organs to the brim until they could no longer contain it.

As Orpal mocked the Awakened Council and the Undead Courts, his clone in Garlen flooded the battlefield with the Chain Maelstrom he received via the prism in his chest, empowering the Upyrs and their equipment with silver lightning.

"Rise, my children!" The Dead King roared. "Take my blessing and show these pathetic ants the true power of our bloodline!"

'Great Mother almighty!' The allied force thought as one, even Marnora.

Every Corrupted Divine Beast and their equipment had suddenly become ten times stronger. Even elder undead and bright violet cores looked like children in comparison, and needed to give their all just to survive.

Things got even worse when the Upyrs formed seven-man units of their own. The Awakened took deep breaths of Invigoration to recover the lost mana, using true magic and body casting to complete their Annihilation before the enemy.

"Fools!" Orpal laughed. "You will hurt my children over my dead body!"

Most of the fighters knew the Dead King wouldn't have said anything like that if he were fighting in person, but his words did wonders for morale nonetheless. His full-powered, Life Maelstrom-boosted Collapsed Moon did even better.

Orpal pointed his crystal spear at the Awakened seven-man unit closer to complete the Annihilation, forcing them to switch to a Bastion. The prismatic sphere and the moonlight wave fought for a couple of seconds before the Bastion crumbled.

The two spells had similar base strength, but the silver lightning amplified Collapsed Moon's destructive power tenfold. Eight Awakened died in an instant, and the barely weakened Blade Spell moved on to the next eight-man unit.

"Stop him!" Marnora yelled in sincere worry, yet only addressed to his Ishara soldiers. "He's pouring all his mana into that spell. If we disrupt it, the Dead King will be defenseless, and his equipment depleted. Watch out for his mage tower!"

At their leader's silent signal, the Isharas joined the Awakened units and released all the Life Maelstrom they had held back until then to empower their temporary allies.

"Let's stop him together." The Elder Ishara said, and the Awakened silently thanked him with a nod.

One Bastion wasn't enough to stop the full power of Orpal's Collapsed Moon, but before the eight-man unit and the Ishara could be vaporized, a second and a third Bastion shielded them.

At the same time, the Upyrs shot their Annihilations, but they were intercepted by the Awakened's Bastions without taking a single life, civilian or otherwise.

The Blade Spell faded without reaping any more victims, and there was no trace of Moonlight near the exhausted figure of the Chosen. Yet when the allied leaders turned up to look at Orpal's clone, they saw a predatory smile on his face and their doom looming above their heads.

"You are so dumb you are almost cute!" Orpal laughed, the red flame over his clone's head sparking with silver light. "I came in full force this time. I have an army of Upyr, and we're more powerful than you'll ever be!"

The seven-man units of Corrupted Divine Beasts and the clash of Silverwing's spells had been a diversion. It had kept the Awakened and the undead from noticing the searing ocean of Fire Souls that the rest of the Upyrs had conjured while their enemies were distracted.

The world energy above Drenghen was set ablaze, the sickly red fire reaching hundreds of meters into the sky and spreading farther by the second thanks to the Life Maelstrom empowering it.

"You can save yourselves, or you can die with the useless human dregs! Your choice!" At his signal, the Fire Soul came down.

Slowly at first, and then gaining speed like an avalanche rolling down a steep mountainside.

"Not on my watch!" Marnora had indeed fallen for the Dead King's trap, but he had left Jinima and the rest of his troops behind exactly for a moment like that.

The Ishara leader was as stunned as the inferior creatures that thought themselves his peers, and his life was apparently on the line along with theirs. So, when his second-in-command came to the rescue with an air-tight rescue plan, no one suspected Jinima had been there all along.

She hadn't missed the growing Fire Soul, and had taken her time studying both the allied and enemy formations.

A squad of over thirty Isharas who had been charging up their Doom Tide for a while put itself between the incoming fiery avalanche and Drenghen. The blood of Selkis released their Doom Tides as one, and their battle formation spread the blue domes into a perfect sphere with no opening.

The Doom Tides crashed against the ocean of Corrupted Fire, and even though more than thirty Upyrs combined their strength into Fire Soul, it advanced only a few meters before dissolving into nothingness.

Doom Tide took the brunt of the Corrupted Flames' destructive power, and the lack of world energy did the rest. With nothing to burn, the fiery, unstoppable avalanche lost cohesion and disappeared.