The united divine front was in trouble. In a mere day their slow but steady advancement was completely halted by a wall of black fire. Mages, knights, even an arch bishop was completely unable to extingish it one way or another, even causing dozens of casualties as the normal troops found out the hard way that this fire danced around with an unseen wind, easily burning through sand and dirt and towards the people trying to put it out, much like a piranha swimming up a stream of piss.
While this would normally be something quite simple to avoid, there were not many safe passages through the mountain range they were currently trying to cross, nevermind that they'd already been repeatedly raided by orcs, goblins, dwarfs and giant spiders as they popped out of nowhere from tunnels that were created and collapsed so quickly no one could reasonably detect all the time, creating a game of cat and mouse where supply lines and soldiers died at every exchange despite the unknown number of enemy casualties. Were that already not bad enough, several griffons herded monsters towards their lines, slowing down random sections of the procession and reducing the effective amount of day time that could be used to advance.
This barrier then, finally made a god show themselves after much pleading of their followers.
No one from the army had actually thought that such would one day happen, they'd simply been praying for an indirect miracle, because even those would actually be quite rare at the moment, the divine messages that started this crusade declaring that a demon from outside this world had enticed the elves, encrouching in divine territory and forcing them to directly confront it, so they'd be 'ocupied'.
"Well, at least that's what i understand of the situation. Did i forget something?" Samael smirked at the bleeding old man stuck on a wall, burned wounds all over his crumbling carcass. His blood wasn't fully red or black though, but also golden. "By the way, if you're average among your so called gods, then i'm sorry to say that you all are going to get your asses handed to you in a bone plate." She didn't wait for the puppet to respond though, instead stabbing her short swords in his eyes and spliting the head and torso together with the mountain wall.
The young girl didn't know exactly why she was supposed to act like she was only so much stronger than a godly avatar and talk shit like that before anihilating the surrounding troops, but she obeyed. Not because she'd been ordered too, but because it was honestly the most fun she'd be having in some time.
She could feel that some kind of power was passing through her and going towards Aki, aparently something similar to pure dao energy if he was to be believed, though how in the actual fuck he'd made her capable of extracting this and how he'd actually intended to use the energy was simply beyond her. It'd aparently only work on this realm because of something he'd done to it, but at least he'd not actually tried explaining the intricacies of all that.
The assassin had never been stupid, she couldn't have been, but she was also not the smartest around, and she would not just become a bookworm all of a sudden.
Even taking the youthfull boy as a 'foster father figure' was half something happening out of conditioning and half because she was a bound undead, so it wasn't like she'd not already changed a lot more in the small window of time she knew him then in the last hundred years. It wasn't all bad, but she didn't really like 'mama'.
She couldn't even insult the elf in her head because she'd been strictly ordered not to. There was no need to insult the giantess to say that she would not last long however. Wether it be Aki tiring of her or her death, the priestess was unlikely to remain important. She was just too good for all that would happen around the bloodthirty fucker that loved to destroy armies with his own hands.
*****
Aki put back the decepated arm on his shoulder, his current training session ending as the older elf sweated a river even as he walked towards the nearest bench. His oponent was mostly untouched, a few gashes here and there, yet the young man would have simply died over a dozen times in the last hours if he couldn't survive with a pierced brain, butchered heart and sieved lungs.
The idea was to train his 'weapon' mastery, so he wasn't ussing any enhancement or even going all out with his speed and strenght, yet his body was already very tough, making the instructor have dificulties damaging him.
"As expected of a sword saint, i can't follow shit of what you say." Grinned Aki, though he had little mirth about his lack of talent. He could remenber most of the poses with nigh absolute perfection and even perform to a passable degree, yet it was simply no good.
"I don't usually repeat myself like this, but you're the worst student i've ever taught, and i've taught children of most races. How in all hells can you even fight like that? It's like you're in several places while standing at the same spot!" Complained the elf that'd been called to teach the god of pride. He'd honestly didn't know what to expect, but this had not ever crossed his mind.
Absurd attributes not withstanding, he was pretty sure the boy had only ever hit him properly once. It'd not been an extended, invisible or even magical attack that'd nicked and cut him the other times.
"Honestly, it's a bit of a problem for normal living, but my willpower can actually influence reality to an extent. As long as you don't counter my own influence, some events will simply happen despite whatever you do. It's a concept similar to sword intent, but a lot broader and focused solely on me, though mine isn't actually ment to hurt other people, that's mostly something all images do even if they're focused on healing." Explained the godling.
"If you don't want to say it, it's none of my business." Snorted the elf.
"I was being literal. Fool others to start the path, fool the universe to transcend and fool yourself to reach the pinacle. You just need to be a wackjob with a lot of raw willpower, though a small amount with enough concentration would also do. The amount of acumulation needed is also crazy however, so it's easy for you to not know. The diference between out psyques is actually gigantic. Your's is focused, a bit smaller than your head and refined, mine's about half this room and somewhat blurry. In the end it's a game of multiplication and i have more factors." He shrugged with an actual smile.
"You're gloating over your potential, but what else do you want?" Asked the suddenly serious man.
"I want you to rest for a bit and then start fighting while thinking of what your sword is, what it means, what it experienced, what it feels and what it causes. I may not be a swordman but having an even better training partner would be for the best. Others will be joining later, so use this time to rest and practice all you want while i'm not going all out."
*****
'C'est la vie dear, how was i supposed to know they'd have actual jammers?' Comented the inconsequential god.
"The same way you figured everything else. Your elfs are lucky i could manufacture at all with so little materials." She complained, not really expecting it to do anything. Her assistant still looked towards her from time to time as she comunicated with their patron.
'I gave you almost a whole warehouse worth of precise parts, what the fuck are you even lacking? Just make a plasma gatling and clean a way into the enemy camp, it's not like most of the present can even scratch your skin.' He snorted, knowing that she was simply disastified about not getting those new materials she'd been promised.
"Already did that. Something calling itself a god decended. After i neutralized it then three more showed up, that was about a minute ago." Elizabeth was currently shooting down a slowly advancing shield as it advanced, a flame burst having already destroyed her clothes had started to sing her skin even as it regenerated.
'....Don't bother with fluorine, start with chlorine. If that doesn't work you can throw some of those hydrogen bombs.' The comand was delayed by a fraction of a second, but with their mental comunication it was noticeable that he'd had a stutter.
Much like her, he wasn't worried about the situation, just surprised at his enemies' stupidity.
Releasing her grip on the gun hold, the disinterested scientist finally made herself an energy shield with her mana, instead taking out a smooth, opaque crystal ball from her ring and twisting her torso as if she was about to throw a baseball, a perfect pitcher posture with every muscle under her metalic skin completely pulled to maximun effectiveness.
Only her targets were somehow capable of even perceiving her actual movement though. The mostly stationary sniper that'd been raining hell on her enemies suddenly moved with speed that betrayed her laziness till now, reaching a relaxing posture just as the crystal ball cracked against the shield hiding her new subjects.
As the substance inside came into contact with the air, it started to sizzle, taking in both matter and energy for but a moment before a it exploded into a lesser version of itself. With what was the equivalent of magical chlorine becoming it's more mundane version, a great expansion happened from the simpler acid, the would be liquid quickly coating the surroundings of the impact with an equivalent of -49 Hammett acidity function as the surrounding air was suffused with hidrogen.
"Mana eater 1.02 is a failure, having completely lost cohesion before even making contact. It's nothing more than a small hydrogen grenade spreading a bit of superacid." She sighed, the failure expected.
Still, her enemies were almost dead now. She'd soon have new materials to figure out and combine. Maybe she'd find something that'd allow for the creation of an astato superacid, a more powerful batery for her plasma rifle, a new metal to alloy into her skin, a good catalist to add to her electro dinamic...
'Deal with the injuries on our side after double tapping the divine avatars, then you can go nuts on the mines. Just the fact that the container worked so well on our second try is already ridiculous, you know? If you can get some infusions of their energy from the puppets than i'll even give you a raise.'
"Understood." There were not many in the same position as her to begin with, so she just signaled her assistant to deal with the ones that actually were after injecting him with a potion between the fourth and fifth rib.
From what she understood, divine energy was mental fortitude containing the will of the very reality around in one way or another, so that ment that she could directly extract it by sucking the manipulated vessels of their mana and gather a bit more by attacking with her mental spikes, their bleeding being fed into her body and the energy naturaly traveling towards the proper container in it's vicinity, Aki. As his soul bound, she'd also get back some of that, but it'd honestly not be that usefull before she learned how to refine it into some sort of stimulant or the like.