The necrotic god decided to respond conservatively. He continued to attack my avatar directly despite its endless regeneration, while he sent his armies to the forest Seldanna was in the process of creating.
I didn’t intervene, letting him commit his army there, happy that I could shift my attention to them and steal their divine Spark immediately. Hundreds of demigod-class undead were impressive, but not enough to take down Seldanna’s avatar.
Though, once they mixed with the zombie army and attacked, I found myself revising that opinion. I had underestimated their effectiveness. The immediate presence of their god meant that their Divine Spark was empowered significantly.
And, it clearly had a bigger impact than I expected.
Luckily, Seldanna had already managed to create a huge forest that was strong enough to counter most of their necrotic mana tricks, giving her some kind of home-field advantage, and allowing her to successfully maintain her defense.
For the moment.
Her forward progress was stalled, under the focused magical assault of the necromancers, the treants finally started to fall. Just a few at first, but they managed that achievement without sacrificing any of their own critical pieces.
That caused Seldanna to pull back almost desperately, doing her best to defend every single treant and every inch she had.
Big mistake.
I wondered if it was her unfamiliarity with the large-scale warfare that triggered the mistake. However, it was also likely that it was her divine nature as the goddess of nature that was making her prioritize keeping her creation safe.
Either way, I didn’t intervene, letting her make that mistake. Ultimately, it was a mistake that worked to our benefit in our current situation. It showed the necrotic god that his armies had been making progress, albeit slowly, giving him the confidence that he could be successful as long as he maintained that strategy.
I would love to face such a static assault. I had many ways of reversing that … I just wanted to find the Eternals first.
I continued my desperate battle as I kept my attention on my fake angel constructs that scoured the far end of the plane, their light attacks doing wonders to not only destroy any undead they came across — which wasn’t much as almost all of the forces was moved to our side to create an invasion army — but also permanently eradicated the necrotic mana that filled the plane.
The advantage of light mana over necrotic mana was unbelievable.
The former didn’t hurt the necrotic god much, but the destruction of the necrotic mana was not a small problem. So, I expected him to send a similar force of liches and death knights to that side to take down the angels at a minimum … though I was hoping for another avatar to deal with them, which would allow me to steal even more spark from him.
Yet, to my surprise, he neither created an avatar,, nor did he sent any of his army. I failed to understand the reason…
Until one of my detection wards finally discovered a movement toward the edge of the plane a concealment ward stopped working for a moment, and a man started flying toward the angel. “Stop,” he shouted, easily blocking the automatic attack of the angel using some mind of the artifact-based magical shield.
At the same time, he decided to speak. “What are you doing! Are your god is willing to throw out the agreement,” he declared.
His words were interesting enough that I had split my attention to control the nearest construct, even though it meant my dragon avatar fell to an even greater disadvantage.
As I used the construct to look at the unknown Eternal, I did my best to come to a decision. Should I try and risk capturing their ship, hoping that they didn’t implement enough safety measures, or try to bluff them?
The former was the more attractive reward, and if hadn’t failed to detect them until their mistake of revealing their presence, I might have chosen to take that risk. But, it was clear that, despite all my improvements, my magical capabilities weren’t enough to unravel all their tricks.
Bluffing, it was.
“No, of course not,” I said, speaking through my connection. “It’s just that my exalted god received a better offer.” With that, the construct raised its hand, and cast a focused light spell.
“You dare to betray us,” the Eternal shouted in anger, his artifact blocking the attack relatively well, but he still flew back. “Do you think that anyone else could face our glorious organization,” he declared.
At the same time, their ship started to move. Their hiding capabilities were quite impressive … but since I had already detected their location, following the movement was much easier compared to the alternative.
My construct acted like it didn’t realize that, and focused its attack on the sole eternal, who was safe from the attack. I could feel them getting ready for an attack. Which was not good news.
Certainly not while I was trying to deal with an actual god in his domain.
Luckily, my tricks were not over. I used all the constructs to attack him together. His artifact wasn’t strong enough to resist that … but on that side of the plane, there was no mana storm to block teleportation. He teleported right back to his ship.
At the same time, I followed with another attack, one that was even stronger, cracking the planar border, a storm immediately invading as the plane was invaded by Primordial Aether.
At the same time, a horrible Primordial Storm under my control hit the ship, pushing it away. Since the ship was designed to resist the primordial aether successfully, it didn’t cause anything more than cosmetic damage … but it pushed it out, out of the protective shadow of the planar border … and just like that, they disappeared into the chaos.
It would take days for them to return even if they wanted to.
Of course, that attack was not for free, and it destroyed all but five constructs, the planar border still broken. I wanted to repair it immediately, but even that momentary split was enough to put my dragon avatar at an even greater disadvantage.
I needed more strength, even if it would make my job harder.
[All Stats +20]
[-600,700 Purified Spark]
[+5 Endurance]
[+4 Intelligence]
The capability increase from the wholesome improvement was considerable, allowing me to control my avatar with an even greater efficiency. However, it would still take a while for me to balance the situation enough to repair the border.
I didn’t want the plane to be destroyed. I needed it to help Mariel.
However, I was still fearful about using my truly secretive tricks. What if Eternals had another ship. After all, they successfully managed to hide one. However, before I could make that decision … I felt a strong movement of Divine Spark.
And another avatar appeared right next to the necrotic god. “Do you think I’ll let you destroy my domain!” he cried in anger, his words enhanced my magic.
I wished I had time to slap my own head. For a moment, I forgot that I wasn’t the only one that wanted to keep the plane intact. From his perspective, the angels were already defeated, and he had the advantage on the other two dimensions.
Then, it clicked me. Maybe he didn’t even realize Eternals were banished successfully. If he noticed their departure, he might very well assume that they were busy counter-attacking the nature plane while we were focused on the battle here.
I wanted him to repair the border, but I didn’t want to make it easy. “I’ll destroy it if I can’t own it,” my dragon avatar shouted back, glowing with a threatening amount of mana, looking like a suicide attack.
Admittedly, it was not too different. The sudden empowerment consumed all of the stored mana I had, and I didn’t have enough purified spark to convert it speedily enough to match him.
Luckily, I had a nice source of replacement right next to me. I charged toward the new avatar, the empowered dragon strong enough to avoid his panicked attacks.
And, I devoured his second avatar.
[+372,421 Purified Spark]
Not as strong as the first one, but definitely enough for me to recover my mana output. He started creating another avatar … but this time, rather than splitting his attention between attacking my dragon avatar and creating the avatar, he kept his full focus on creating an impenetrable defensive ward around the avatar.
I charged toward the ward, it bounced me off … and I used that momentum shift to suddenly reverse direction, and slam his lich army from behind, taking down a notable minority of them while he finished conjuring his avatar and teleported it away.
[+144,021 Purified Spark]
And, I had another meal in the process.
I rushed toward his actual body once again once he finished with his task. “You’re pushing your luck,” he shouted, but this time, despite all his anger, his voice was much weaker.
Losing two avatars wasn’t exactly trivial.
{Strength: 65 Charisma: 65
Precision: 65 Perception: 65
Agility: 65 Manipulation: 65
Speed: 65 Intelligence: 86
Endurance: 98 Wisdom: 65}
{Purified Divine Spark: 712,965}
{ADDITIONAL SPARKS
Light - Chosen 7.4
Nature - Chosen 10
Knowledge - Chosen 10}
{MINIONS
GODDESSES
Elven Goddess
Goddess of Knowledge}
