A stone giant Defiler appeared from the dark orb like it was an image projected from a hologram projector, its fist thrust up at the top of the energy cage that was still in place and slicing up outpouring Defilers, trying to destroy it. But its fist was sliced into several pieces like an apple by a specialized apple cutter. Then an arrow of light came through the areas between the thin bars and impaled it right on its chest area and its neck, then exploded from inside. The broken stones and rocks from this Defiler's body were launched all around it, damaging more of its minions and even peers.
"What made them take these shapes?" Tze Cha came back up into the air after delivering a dive attack that crushed and incinerated dozens of Defilers and had two mid tier Defilers capable of flight following him into the sky. These two mid tier Defilers were in the shape of multi headed, long-necked birds with hairless bat wings and spikes on their backs and long tails made of hundreds of sections.
"They sometimes take the shape of their former victims, sometimes they detect the lores and mysteries that inspire fear and desperation in a realm and take those forms." Jianmen dashed from positions to positions in the air, swinging his meat cleavers and his rattan broom, cutting hordes of defilers in the air with orange and golden energy blades and unleashing walls of wind, tornadoes and wind blades that break the formations and momentum of the flying Defilers.
There were mages, archers and shooters with enchanted ranged weapons standing on floating platforms shooting their fully charged powerful attacks at other flying Defilers that launched themselves into the air. There were many of them, their attacks were powerful, and they were protected by sturdy, multi-layered protected arrays that could even withstand point blank blasts from large caliber cannons. But when faced with large hordes of defilers, some with razor sharp claws that could slice through steel plates and some with hardened horns and knuckles covered with bones.
Several shooters and archers were thrown off their floating platforms from the gruesome blows at them, some of them were lucky enough to be caught by their teammates below in mostly good condition and ready to continue fighting, while most of them were severely injured or even torn to pieces while they were in the air.
Tze Cha's fighting style was quite similar to Jianmen's - he flew around in the sky like an extremely agile and versatile battleship, unleashing devastating energy blasts at all the enemies. Rash, on the other hand, became a mini floating fortress, his tentacles swiftly and fluidly shooting through the air, impaling Defiler after Defiler and cleansing their energy in the process. Many of the fighters around also realized this and gathered around him and attacked from these more advantageous positions as well as help Rash clean up the Defilers he missed.
"Hiss!" Another mid tier Defiler with the head of a wide-mouth serpent with no teeth but only dangling tentacles and multiple tongues inside emerged from the dark orb and blew a stream of dark smoke at the energy cage. The energy from the cage lit up and burnt the smoke into clean ashes, but the cage itself was corrupted and drained in the process, and its integrity and structure became weakened.
Jianmen threw a piece of folded paper sigil into the cage, which upon entering turned into a spinning energy ball with spikes and blades and started cutting and slicing more of the Defilers inside, including the mid tier Defiler with the head of a toothless serpent.
This serpent Defiler screeched from the wounds, then its whole body exploded and splashed droplets of his wretched bodily fluids and blood in a wide area, corrupting and corroding the cage, the spinning energy blade, and the robes and body armors of many of the fighters around the crater.
Cries and moans of pain came from those who were unfortunately touched by the droplets of this foul and debilitating dark liquid. The ones that got touched by more droplets even had their bodies melted and had their souls and minds sapped away.
"Careful!" Nameless rushed to the position between Pei and many of the monks, his golden aura expanded and solidified into a golden dome against the droplets of dark liquid coming their way like pellets from a shotgun.
The golden dome shook, cracked and crumbled from the droplets of dark liquid, many of which splattered onto Nameless. Thanks to his help, the monks and the exorcists behind him were spared. But the liquid on his skin instantly started to corrupt his hair, his skin and his muscles.
"Nameless!" Pei shouted and rushed to behind Nameless and delivered a full force palm strike onto Nameless' back. All of the dark liquid splattered onto Nameless' body was knocked into the air and fell onto the ground.
Nameless clenched his teeth, sat down in a meditation pose and started chanting verses of scriptures. His golden aura was gradually pulled back from the areas around him and turned into streams of energy that filled the holes on his body - half of his chest area, one third of his face, and his entire belly was then covered with golden energy - the parts of him that were just corrupted by the liquid.
Pei stood in front of Nameless, in the space between him and the incoming Defiler horde. Her two long swords raised up, and left trails of light green and light blue energy in the air as she swung them like a dance.
With this brief moment, another mid tier Defiler shaped like a giant cat snuck through the firing lines of the exorcists' energy sword attacks and the monks' golden aura of lightning and lunged at Nameless and Pei. Pei immediately swung the two swords forward, and the trails she drew in the air like floating ribbons immediately wrapped around this cat Defiler's body and held it up in the air. Three energy swords impaled this cat Defiler before it could attempt to make another move.
"Bang!" The sound of metal crashing and grinding against each other came from the center of the crater, the energy cage created by Jianmen was finally destroyed.