The battle of two dragons raged at the dark skies of the dead land, while Seldanna led our invincible treant army with great efficiency, leveraging their inherent advantage over the disposable zombies in great efficiency as she destroyed them.
Without the liches and death knights to support to army, she was even able to focus on transforming our breach point into a lush, raging forest, though this time, it didn’t look like her usual beautiful, calm forests, but a raging chaotic piece filled with thorns and spikes, looking threatening.
She flooded the seeds with a shocking amount of mana, putting a drain even to the amount I was able to provide to her momentarily, but I didn’t ask her to stop. It was a strategically dangerous commitment, creating a place for them to strike back. It was not the kind of strategy I would have committed.
But I didn’t stop her either. If the plane was populated by humans or elves — or even any kind of living being — I might have insisted on maintaining strategic mobility to hit their weak spots and logistic weaknesses, but those concepts didn’t apply to a bunch of unliving that didn’t have any need other than necrotic mana.
Then, there was the other reason Seldanna had a great advantage. I noticed three liches approaching the battle on top of a bone dragon. With a raging cry of nature mana explosion, I threw the necrotic avatar in that direction. Then followed.
[+3,692 Purified Spark]
And, immediately grabbed and converted the Purified Spark they had. Another small but noticeable jump to my reserves. I didn’t immediately use it to boost my stats, but instead used it to convert Primordial Aether I continuously grabbed from a small breach I maintained, using the new amount to quicken the process even more.
Focusing on converting the Aether and the Necrotic mana would have been even faster … but that, I didn’t want to commit to.
Not before I could find the location of the Eternals. The less information they gather, the better. I still didn’t know the full range of their magical capabilities, but I had seen enough to be scared.
I continued to fight ‘recklessly’ as I threw around the necrotic dragon like a rag doll, to the point of almost pitying the avatar. Even as it desperately drained the ready necrotic mana to empower itself, he was not able to match the endless mana I was channeling.
Cheating was always fun.
I moved around, faster and faster, destroying more of his arriving leadership cadre.
[+3,190 Purified Spark]
War was a great tragedy, but not when our side was made exclusively of disposable pawns, and our enemies were exclusively undead monstrosities that were best erased from existence. I moved around, preventing the arrival of the stronger casters, while Seldanna continued to destroy the rest of the army and expand the forest even more.
However, regardless of the ease I was having, I didn’t dare to slow down, continuing my aim to search for the inevitable Eternal base, desperate to find them before the real body of the necrotic god arrived to face me.
Unfortunately, that, I failed. At one moment, without a warning, I felt the enemy avatar getting stronger. Suddenly, I couldn’t just throw it around while destroying his armies with ease.
The necrotic god was near, and I was nowhere near destroying him.
Sigh.
I turned my gaze toward the horizon, and soon noticed a lich, floating forward, easily mistaken for an ordinary undead if it wasn’t for the suffocating waves of necrotic mana flowing out of him like an endless wave.
Not an easy enemy.
It was the time for the contingency, one that I was hoping not to use. I pumped my avatar with as much mana as it could hold for a moment, and let it sink into the ground and turn into a tree for a moment, radiating an explosion of nature mana, trying to trigger plant growth all around the plane while it desperately drew in the mana.
For a moment, it looked like I was trying to snatch control of the plane from the necrotic god.
As far as the distractions went, it was spectacular.
It was a stupid move that was impossible to make. I knew that, and my enemy knew that … but the problem was, he had to understand why I would make such a stupid move despite its apparent uselessness.
He pulled back along with his avatar, his tendrils of magic extending from a distance.
I used the opportunity to teleport away, not wanting to waste the time I gained. At best, I barely had a minute. I used my mana-conversion breach to slip out of the plane, and immediately moved to another ward that had been attached to the surface of the plane.
One that is made of Tantric mana to resist corrosion. Unlike the giant ark bursting through the planar border, it was a secret operation, therefore allowing different attacks.
I moved around the planar border as quickly as possible, and created another breach, deploying a hundred more constructs to the mixture.
However, this time, they were not treants, but something I had forged. Essentially, they were empty sets of armors, filled with enough pseudo-HP to make them look like they were full, but without anything to heal, it was useless.
Ultimately, those suits of armor were wholly ineffective when it came to fighting when considering the amount of effort I had put into them and the mana I had spent in their construction…
However, still, they were a great distraction for two reasons. First, every suit of armor came with a set of metal wings, each layered with enough illusion spells to trick an actual god — hopefully.
And, second, each had its own mana storage filled with an incredible amount of Light Mana, which I had carefully converted using Mariel as a conduit. I could have skipped the whole armor fiasco and used the light mana as an explosive ward and be more effective.
But that wouldn’t have scared the necrotic god just as much.
The light was devastating against necrotic mana.
Since I was already back on the plane proper, I just teleported to my fake-avatar. The Aether Dimension was still in an extremely chaotic state, making teleportation impossible for anyone else, but still, it was nothing compared to the true chaos of Primordial Aether.
I arrived just as the necrotic god realized the whole trick with the tree avatar was nothing but a distraction, and sent his own dragon avatar toward me while he started moving toward the border. Pity that he was too late.
If he had been just ten seconds faster, he would have destroyed my fake-avatar while it was still in its helpless tree form while it was uselessly trying to spread its reach. Unfortunately, I was in place, and just as he was about to reach me, I made the avatar transform once more, turning into the dragon, maintaining the roots…
Which suddenly jumped out of the ground and stabbed the necrotic avatar, greedily draining the Divine Spark that created it and passing it into me.
I had to admit. At that moment, I pitied my opponent. Probably under the ‘kind request’ of the eternal, he had turned every defensive asset into an offensive one for a very dangerous assault, only to be caught completely unprepared, and just as he was about to deliver the counterattack, he was caught in a deadly pincer.
Which cost him a very expensive avatar, which he didn’t like much considering his cries.
[+731,931 Purified Spark]
I wondered what he would think if he knew his Necrotic Spark was not locked behind a ward but devoured.
Nothing good, I presumed.
Worse, before he could go to the border to deal with the ‘angels’, my avatar caught with his real body, and attacked.
I would have loved to say that I destroyed him … but the reality was, it was the opposite. Even with the endless mana, I was channeling to the dragon avatar, the best I could do was to delay him, with every spell of his destroying a chunk of the avatar.
If it was actually empowered by Divine Spark, those blows would have dispersed that spark, weakening the avatar in quick order.
But, since I was a cheater, I just continued to pump the avatar with more and more mana, its nature spark core easily converting it into nature mana to regrow its limbs. At the same time, I made sure to move that core repeatedly to avoid the blows…
Even with that, it was a hopeless battle for that dragon avatar. Eventually, it would fall.
Unfortunately for my opponent, the keyword was eventually. With Seldanna attacking from one side, and the light constructs attacking from the other, he was rapidly losing his invasion forces, each second costing him another chunk of his forces.
I kept my attention on the dragon avatar, doing my best to maintain the situation. Whether in terms of weakening his immortal army, or expanding the grasp of nature, we were the ones making progress.
It was his turn to come up with a solution.
{Strength: 45 Charisma: 45
Precision: 45 Perception: 45
Agility: 45 Manipulation: 45
Speed: 45 Intelligence: 62
Endurance: 73 Wisdom: 45}
{Purified Divine Spark: 797,223}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Nature - Chosen 10
Knowledge - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
GODDESSES
Elven Goddess
Goddess of Knowledge}
