"Sigmund Krieg," Lelith Maledictx said with a sly grin. "I didn't think you'll pursue me this far out. I must say, you are really…dedicated. Or should I say, obsessed?"
Sigmund glared at her. "If I don't, you'll continue to commit your atrocities. Was the destruction of Norwood City and the enslavement of its residents not enough? How about the massacre of Ridgewood, where you slowly tortured three hundred civilians to death over the course of three months, and then made use of their bodies for hideous experiments? And those are only two in a long list of madness and evil crimes that you've committed."
"Crimes?" Lelith threw her head back and laughed, her coldly beautiful features both lovely and terrifying at the same time. Despite the attractiveness, there was a darkness to her beauty that sent chills down my spine, something that spoke about the unnaturalness of her face that had something to do with the demonic pact she made. She snickered. "Don't presume to judge me by human laws. You know how this world is. Strong eat the weak. The weak have no choice but to grovel and suffer in endless pain, and be playthings for us strong. I'm more surprised you don't see reason and still refuse to join us. You could have made a wonderful consort."
"Human laws?" Eliza snarled. "How about elven laws? You're a filthy criminal who should be sentenced to death several times over for your crimes against your fellow elves!"
"Fellow elves?" Lelith was thoroughly amused. "Do you not understand that we are no longer on the same level? You call us dark elves, but that's a misnomer you regular elves use to name those you fear and envy. We are transcended. We have embraced the powers you deride and fear so much, in order to become stronger! You know nothing about the delicious gifts our generous patrons bestowed upon us, and instead you spurn and hate us. How shortsighted. Then again, I appreciate it…for if it weren't for your narrow-minded perspectives, we will not have a fresh population to continually harvest pain and suffering from."
"Disgusting." Eliza spat. Lelith snorted and shook her head before raising a hand.
"Capture as many of them as you can and bring them back to Corrumargh. They will make fine specimens for torture. Kill those you can't capture."
The sleek Raiders began sliding forward, their cannons barking. Splinters and dark lances showered our position, only to smash into the shimmering barriers that Sylvie and Silvia had erected. I glanced at them and smiled. Their spirit arrays had been prepared carefully and stood strong, enduring whatever punishing barrage the dark elves threw at us.
"Good job, Sylvie and Silvia!"
"We can't keep this up for long," Sylvie said through gritted teeth as she worked hard to mend and repair broken runes in places where the formation was breached.
"Yeah! You need to attack back too!" Silvia added as she helped her sister.
"Leave that to me," Sigmund said and leaped forward. I watched in awe as he landed in one of the Raiders, and in a single stroke, cleaved the scary black ship in half. The debris of the Raider plummeted, spilling falling elite Cabal Knights below. Their armor appeared to absorb most of the impact as they landed, but a concerted attack from the elves blew them apart. Arrows, fireballs, icicles, wind blades, lightning bolts, earth spikes and more struck them, and though their tenacious armor allowed them to withstand the first couple of barrages, they were eventually overwhelmed by the sheer volume of spells and projectiles.
It didn't matter if they had a 2+ or 3+ armor save. Their commander would inevitably roll a bunch of 1s.
Realizing that they couldn't afford to be picked off piecemeal, the rest of the Raiders continued to surge forward, despite Sigmund wreaking havoc in their ranks. He downed another three Raiders before he finally landed on the lead Raider where Lelith stood, preparing to strike the leader of the dark elves down and end this farce. In fact, even before she could react to his presence, he had already split the Raider in half, forcing her elite Cabal Knights to disembark and land on the ground. Lelith herself already landed, lashing out with a thorny whip that glanced against the forcefield that Syvlie and Silvia had constructed.
I readied to move out to intercept her, with Myria by my side. Her water whip blade snaked out to crash against Leilith's thorny whip, tangling the flexible weapons together before dispersing in a spray of water and poison.
"Stand back."
To our surprise, Sigmund landed right beside us. He had noticed the Kobolds and the surviving cavalry atop the Dire Wolves racing to us, and decided to form a wedge against which the enemy would break. His main target was Lelith, however, and he confronted her with his raised sword. His blade glowed a ferocious blue and a swing of his weapon blasted the surroundings to oblivion, cutting down at least two Cabal Knights, penetrating their accursed armor.
The rest weren't so easy to fell. Even as I provided long range support, I noticed that my azure arrows didn't punch through their armor or helms, and they were a lot harder to kill than their Dire Wolf riding brethren. The elves had realized this, and focused on bombarding them with arrows and spells. The only way to get past their armor was through sheer volume of attacks.
Lelith, though, was completely unaffected by the blast. She laughed and skipped away when Sigmund charged, avoiding him instead of engaging in direct combat. Sigmund showed no sign of frustration, and he grimly pursued her.
"Don't be so impatient," Lelith taunted. "I have the perfect opponent for you."
Sigmund's brow rose, and he suddenly jumped away when someone leaped off one of the remaining Raiders to crash onto the branch with enough force to send tremors rippling throughout the vicinity. I caught a glimpse of a heavily armored form, and at first glance, I thought it was a Cabal Knight.
But I was mistaken.
"No…" Eliza gasped in disbelief. It wasn't just her. Throughout the elvish lines, I could sense shock and outrage unfolding throughout the defenders. "This can't be!"
Then I was able to focus more clearly on the newcomer. Unlike the dark elves, she didn't have silver hair, gray-blue skin and red eyes. No, she was a regular elf with long blond hair. Her eyes were emerald instead of the usual sapphire, and she was wearing green and white robes, with gleaming armor over them. In one hand she held a treasure sword that brimmed with rich mana.
However, her eyes and expression were blank, as if all thought and free will had been sucked out of them. A cold, eerie emptiness filled her emerald eyes and she stared hollowly at the elvish lines before adopting an aggressive stance.
"Ardena?" Eliza whispered in disbelief. I whirled toward her, astounded.
"Wait, what? This is the elf knight you were talking about? The top elf swordswoman in Yggdrasil?"
"That's right!" Eliza nodded. "Why is she here? And what happened to her?"
"Wouldn't you like to know?" Lelith was laughing gayly as Sigmund swung his sword at her. Then Ardena suddenly launched herself forward, forcing Sigmund to swing around and parry her sword. A golden blast exploded from her glowing blade, only neutralized by the azure draconic energies that Sigmund conjured to defend himself.
The black swordsman parried another blow from the elven swordswoman, retreating as he was forced back by her flurry of furious blows. Even with her mind hollowed out, her swordsmanship had not been dulled, and she executed a flawless series of strokes that kept Sigmund on the backfoot.
"Ardena! Stop! Sigmund is our ally! Why are you…?"
"It's useless!" Lelith cackled, spinning around and surging toward her. Myria quickly stepped into place to intercept her, her water whip sword colliding against the archoness's thorny whip. Lelith then whirled about and slashed with a long dagger that Myria just managed to parry by retracting her flexible sword. Even as they traded blows, Lelith continued to taunt us. "It took us a lot of resources and time, but it was completely worth it! She had high magical resistance and fought all the way to the very end, but we finally succeeded in breaking her will and enslaving her! Your greatest knight – your greatest pride and joy – is now corrupted and under my command! And with this, soon the whole of Yggdrasil will follow after and become an extension of Corrumargh!"
"No! Ardena! You have to regain control over yourself!"
"Ardena! Snap out of it!"
"It's us! You swore an oath to protect the elvish enclaves! Break out of the control!"
The panicking elves began yelling and screaming at Ardena, but she ignored every one of them and continued assaulting Sigmund. To his credit, he had overcome his initial shock and was slowly fighting back. regaining his stance, he parried another blow before ducking under a slash and ramming his armored elbow into her belly. But Ardena's stomach was also protected by chainmail, and though she folded over and skidded back, she didn't seem hurt. Instead, she countered with another powerful blast from her sword that Sigmund dove out of the way. Digging his sword into the ground, Sigmund pivoted about and retaliated with a blue blast that Ardena calmly cleaved apart.
The two sword users charged and clashed explosively in the middle of the branch, the shockwaves of their collision buffeting both friend and foe alike. I gritted my teeth and tried to support Myria as she traded blows with Lelith, but the latter was an Earth ranked and was thus overwhelming Myria. Fortunately, the Atlantean princess had experience as well as a flexible and unpredictable weapon, and she was able to hold her ground for a short time.
"If I go all out, I'll only be able to match her for two minutes," she told me after she was pushed back. I nodded and fired an arrow that Lelith dodged. She did a cartwheel before lashing out with her whip, but Myria protected me with her own twisting sword that smacked the wicked black barbs away.
Unfortunately, Lelith and Ardena weren't the only enemies. The Dire Wolf cavalry and Kobolds descended upon us. The Raiders had finally descended low enough to disgorge their troops, and both elite Cabal Knights and Gladiatrixes marched silently or sprinted howling toward us. I spun around and fired a barrage of arrows that felled a few of the Gladiatrixes, but most of them wheeled away with incredible acrobatics. Even with their light armor, their speed and agility more than made up for it as they evaded the spells and arrows diverted toward them.
In contrast, the Cabal Knights weathered absurd amounts of punishment before their sturdy armor finally buckled. A few fell to their knees, seemingly to die in kneeling postures because their armor locked up and refused to allow them to just topple over, but the rest continued marching.
The Kobolds, in contrast, began to tear into our lines in a frenzy, passing through the barriers that Sylvie and Silvia had erected. The barriers were designed only to keep out projectiles whistling toward us above certain velocities, but it wouldn't keep physical bodies out as long as they didn't travel too quickly.
Fortunately, the Kobolds weren't able to sink their claws onto soft flesh. They found themselves crashing into an unbreakable line of Guardian Golems, who proceeded to pummel them to the ground. Mud Fishes turned the area into a bog, sinking Dire Wolves and trapping their riders. While the dark elf riders struggled to disembark from their thrashing Dire Wolves and look for a safe place to land, they were assaulted by Phantom Stumps and Ghost Pumpkins. Their blades and glaives passed through the spectral spirit beasts, who then proceeded to whip them with vines or smashed them off their steeds and into the marsh that the Mud Fishes had created in the surroundings. As strong as they were, the weight of their armor meant that the dark elves sank straight down.
The Gladiatrixes reached the elves first, whooping as they catapulted themselves through the barrier and slashing downward with their lethal daggers and whips. Their weapons clanged harmlessly against the orange and white shells of Colossal Crabs, who seized the desperately evading acrobats with their pincers. While the majority of them were able to spin in midair or flip themselves away, a few of them weren't able to avoid getting crushed by the colossal pincers. Without armor, they were pretty much glass cannons and were squished into bloody pulps by my merciless crustacean spirit beasts.
The Cabal Knights formed an armored phalanx that ruthlessly shouldered past the spells and arrows, but even their armor wasn't impervious to the raw blunt force of my Tree Revenants. Thick tree brunches slammed down on them, and wood hammered them into flattened wrecks. The Pumpkin Wraiths weaved through them, hacking and slashing, and though their razor-leaf scythes had difficulty in penetrating the spiky black armor, they bought enough time for the Tree Revenants to lumber into position and hammer the foe into submission.
While they fought the army of dark elves and their Kobold and Dire Wolf allies, I focused on Lelith. Myria was good on her word, buying more than the two minutes she had promised, but I noticed the blood dripping from multiple cuts as she slowly succumbed to her opponent's blows. Refusing to leave her to the enemy, I charged in and swung Azure Dragon. Lelith laughed as she leaped over my glowing blade, countering with a riposte that I parried. I whirled around and swatted away her unfurling whip, and then directed a freezing blast at her that she cleaved apart with her wickedly shaped long dagger.
"It doesn't matter how many of you there are," Lelith scoffed as she slashed at me, then whirled around to parry a strike from Myria. Myria's sword morphed into an almost living, snaking whip that spun about Lelith like a tempest, but somehow Lelith had the reflexes to block or evade every one of them. Those that she failed to avoid, she adjusted her stance so that her armor could absorb the blows. She cackled and spun about to kick Myria aside while thrusting her long dagger at me. I blocked the blow, and jumped out of range when her thorny whip struck out, the barbs leaving scars across the bark of the World Tree branch. "You Mystic ranked warriors are no match for an Earth ranked like me."
"Perhaps," I conceded. "So that just means I need to call in an Earth ranked friend."
"Huh?"
Lelith spared a glance at Sigmund and chuckled when she saw that he was pressured. The black swordsman was trading blows with Ardena, refusing to give ground but unable to gain any sort of advantage. The elven knight was living up to her title as Yggdrasil's strongest swordswoman, and she was a blur of ferocity against Sigmund's still but unyielding figure. Golden flashes exploded across their vicinity, often countered by blue draconic sparks that scattered every time their blades collided violently. So strong were their exchanges that the bark-covered ground beneath them was crumbling, a crater forming underneath their feet.
"Looks like your Earth ranked friend is still pretty occupied to me."
Then her smug face transformed into one of alarm when a golden beam exploded against the place where she stood, forcing her to cartwheel away. As she landed nimbly on her feet, she looked up with narrowed eyes.
"What was that?"
Hei Ba roared spitefully with all nine of his heads before their writhing necks lunged forward to devour her with mercilessly snapping jaws.