Lord Miln glanced at the giggling form of Ileot.

Ileot Swacc grinned at Lord Miln, his glee obvious. “Can you handle the two remaining Nether Heralds? Now is not the time for hubris.”

“I’m confident in my capabilities.” Lord Miln said without any sort of enmity. He understood very well how important this portion of the plan would be. And also, it was somewhat gratifying to see that Ileot shared his excitement for what was to come.

Everything for this moment. Every sacrifice, every drop of sweat… everything to create this opening.

“Then we began,” Ileot whispered in his high pitched voice. He raised his hands like a music conductor, slowly drawing them through the air in short, circular motions. Although the movements appeared casual, his fingertips left trails of silvery light in their wake. When a strange, circular sigil was completed, a strange pulse echoed outward.

The veil that Ileot had maintained for the past several months was ripped violently away. There was a heartbeat of silence as the surrounding area grasped the change. Then, while everything around him was still, Ileot chuckled.

Almost instantly, the right flank of the Aether forces descended into chaos.

With a small smile, Lord Miln watched half of the Nether Beasts go wild, turning on their companions in their rampage. Above, a flicker went through the blue veins that hung in the Great Rift. A split second afterward, fully one-third of the blue veins above went dark, leaving huge gaps in the grand working being made for the Nether King.

Ileot pouted as he considered the change in the Great Rift. “I had hoped it would be more splashy than that.”

“It’s just enough.” Lord Miln gestured sharply. “Time to head out.”

*****

Randidly’s pace was not fast, but that was not really because he was so exhausted that he couldn’t move well. And even if he was, Acri would have been only too happy to use its newfound size to act as a mount.

Randidly kept his gait even because there wasn’t a need to move faster than was comfortable. Although, he couldn’t deny how near he was to being forced to rely on Acri. No, the reason Randidly moved so slow was that his attention was split in several directions, and he didn’t want to miss developments in even one of the situations.

Most easily for his attention, he tried to assist the average soldier in the area. Randidly moved back toward the basecamp of Lady Iellaya’s forces, issuing orders for all of the assembled forces, even the reinforcements that had just been standing in front of the fort, to retreat back inside. With all the losses they had experienced, the numbers wouldn’t be a problem. And the fort was a much more defensible location that simply hanging around the field fortifications.

Randidly had been rather worried whether the reinforcement troops would obey him, someone how really didn’t have any official rank in Lady Iellaya’s camp, but honestly, most people seemed more than happy to believe he was a leader and were dutifully trooping back to cover.

Perhaps they just liked the order to retreat, Randidly thought with a wry smile.

Another portion of Randidly’s attention was on Lady Iellaya’s battle, where the pressure she placed on her Nether Herald rose sharply after discarding all pretenses. Her tail and teeth slashed back and forth, constantly seeking to find a flaw in the Nether Herald’s slippery defense. If she couldn’t wound this singular Herald now, she certainly wouldn’t have a chance to do so when there were four working in concert.

Yet it was the third bit of his attention, focused on the three Nether Heralds that were hurrying over, that were the most stressful. Randidly burned through the remainder of his Mana to throw vines and flames up to strike and distract them, but it barely slowed them down at all. Since there were three of them, they could simply rip their way through basically anything that Randidly had to throw at them. Their bodies were powerful enough that it would take quite a lot for Randidly’s Skills to do much without a heavy image, and Randidly didn’t have that sort of juice right now.

Yet suddenly a new sensation distracted Randidly. A strange tremor ran throughout the battlefield. Looking up sharply, Randidly’s gaze turning toward the Aether Headquarters.

Congratulations! Your Skill Aether Detection has grown to Level 178!

...what the hell was that? Randidly frowned. Ileot…? Or even Lord Miln…?

The passing energy had been significant enough that Randidly had noticed it, but it had passed quickly enough that he couldn’t sense what the function of that energy was. It hadn’t engaged with him or his energy at all. So instantly, Randidly paused in his observation of the three original things and devoted himself solely to watching for repercussions for this energy pulse.

It didn’t take long to notice what was impacted; some of the Aether reinforcements immediately turned listless and distracted. They stopped in the walk, falling to their knees even when their companions urged them forward. Luckily, it seemed it was a relatively small percentage that was affected, mostly those walking at the edges of their formation.

Yet Randidly’s gaze focused again on the rocky outcropping after he discovered the effect. But why would they weaken our forces now…? Do they intend… to sacrifice us…?

Randidly’s Grim Intuition billowed outward, even as he used every trick he could think of to distract the trio of charging Nether Heralds. What he found on the wider battlefield was even more confusing that his initial impression of the results of that energy. It wasn’t just Lady Iellaya’s reinforcements that were panicking: it was every reinforcement on the battlefield.

Yet that wasn’t the weird part. It was the fact that about half of the Nether Beasts seemed to be behaving strangely too. And instead of becoming apathetic like the Aether forces, these Nether Beasts become positively feral, attacking anyone nearby, even fellow Nether Beasts. In terms of numbers, Lady Iellaya’s camp seemed to be an outlier; perhaps only twenty percent of their reinforcements were behaving strangely.

Was it some sort of mental attack…? Randidly couldn’t figure it out.

Across the battlefield, almost 100% of the reinforcements from the other camps had become mere decorations on the battlefield. Not that it really affected the health of the lines much, with the Nether forces turning on themselves. Perhaps even more confusing is that the camp on the other side of Commander Terith’s camp had completely gone feral. They were killing each other and some of that aggression was spreading outward to the two camps around it.

Pressing his lips together, Randidly continued to walk quickly forward. What the hell was going on…? Aether fighting Aether and Nether fighting Nether…?

Suddenly, the crowd of retreating bodies parted, and Randidly saw Salazar speaking happily to a group of exhausted-looking followers caked in mud. With a few light steps, Randidly pushed himself to Salazar’s side, wincing while doing so. Salazar paused in his story, seemingly rather shocked to see Randidly. And if anything… the snakeman blushed. “S-s-s-sir-”

“Keep up the good work,” Randidly said, clapping on Salazar’s shoulder. Then he moved forward. With Salazar serving as a stabilizing influence, it seemed that the retreat would continue, despite the sudden strangeness on the battlefield. One less thing to worry about then.

Behind him, Randidly overheard a little bit of what Salazar was saying after he moved away. “...a-ahem, a-as I was s-saying… although they all assured us that Randidly Ghosthound’s journey into the Fate Armory was a fruitless endeavor, my faith was never swayed. Even after waiting for seven days and seven nights, when Zauna came to me with her blubbering worries…”

Randidly could only shake his head helplessly before pushing Salazar out of his mind. Instead, he focused on the immediate problem of the Nether Heralds that would attack Lady Iellaya. Yet to Randidly’s surprise, someone had interposed themselves in the path of the trio while Randidly had been distracted.

“Is our camp really so weak you can ignore us…?” Vualla favored the three Nether Heralds with a sharp smile. Hefting the heavy gauntlets that Randidly had made for her, she adopted a fighting stance. “Let me give you a lesson in mistakes and regrets, children.”

It was a small thing, but Randidly’s Ruinous Drive spread outward once more and settled across Vualla’s back. With his Mana depleted and his Willpower reduced to scraps, there was very little else Randidly could do.

Except, of course, reach through that bridge of warmth between them, with all his emotion and hope and trust. He followed that warmth to that spot on her back where he had touched her, establishing the Nether Ritual and then stabilizing it later with an Aether connection. Good luck.

Vualla jumped like someone prodded her in the behind with a long icicle. Seeing the movement as aggression, the three Nether Heralds slowed down, spreading out to box Vualla in. Recovering quickly, she took a sharp step toward the left, accelerating toward one of the Nether Heralds on the edge.

It reacted quickly, twisting and spinning its torso and legs independently of each other as it moved forward to meet her. The other two Nether Heralds surged toward Vualla’s side and back. Clearly they intended to deal with this sudden threat very quickly.

Vualla punched and the simple motion caused the air to roar like the ignition of an engine. The Nether Herald moved with an almost liquid-like fluidity to avoid the blow, but Vualla’s punch seemed to slide sideways in the air after it and smash into its shoulder joint. The Nether Herald’s exoskeleton cracked audibly.

With a swift sway, Vualla avoiding the slashing retaliation from the Nether Herald’s arm and then kicked it sharply backward in order to turn and deal with the other two foes. And in fact, her movements had a compact sharpness that practically drooled an incredibly refined image regarding kinetic energy in her body.

One that didn’t lose out at all to the dense Nether that was flooding the area. The same Nether that was slowly being absorbed by the grand formation, which slowly gathered it in a swirling mass above.

When the two aggressive Nether Heralds reached her position, they unleashed a flurry of combined attacks aiming to overwhelm Vualla. Although most of the strikes Vualla was able to weave her way through, several hits glanced off of her arms and shoulders, earning a grimace from her face. When relying on the heavy gauntlets Randidly had provided for her, the attacks of the Nether Herald’s left subtle scratches in the material. Very quickly, serious damage began to accumulate.

Vualla would step and jab, driving one off, and the other would pounce forward and bring its arms slashing downward at weird angles. Then the third Nether Herald rejoined the fight and she was pressured even further. She simply didn’t have enough time to mount any sort of serious offensive; it was already oppressive enough that her normal punches could hold three Nether Heralds at bay for this long.

...she’s really improving, Randidly reflected with not a little pride. But this is her limit. As for how much longer…

By this point, the furious exchange of blows between the Nether Herald’s and Vualla had lasted about ten seconds. Using her footwork, Vualla kept shifting her body so she would only really need to deal with two of the foes at once. Her quick steps were almost ghost-like, allowing her to move unexpectedly and accelerate out of positions where she was getting overwhelmed.

Punch after punch flickered out. Yet these were biting blows, not breaking ones. She hadn’t again managed to inflict an injury.

Yet for her trouble, her arms were covered in bleeding scratches after struggling for ten seconds and her gauntlets bore deep scratches. Randidly watched with worried eyes as one Nether Herald knocked away her guard and rushed forward, simply occupying her two arms. Then another twisted and rolled between the first’s legs like a ball, bringing all four of its limbs together and smashing upward toward Vualla’s chest.

Dodge! Randidly screamed inwardly. Then he licked his lips as Vualla body was smashed backward, up into the air, flying rapidly backward from the powerful blow. Randidly’s heart clenched for a second, but he could immediately sense with Grim Intuition that Vualla had added her own strength into the jump to disperse some of the power from the attack and carrying her back to relative safety.

With that much force, she might make it to the supply track, Randidly thought, weirdly impressed. Then he turned back to the issue at hand. Besides, the other battle...

The Nether Herald that was facing Lady Iellaya moaned piteously. It wasn’t defeated, but it was certainly severely injured. Lady Iellaya’s strikes were finally hitting home; the raven-winged serpent grinned as it gleefully worsened the injury. The strange crimson lines across Lady Iellaya’s scales were more eye-catching than ever, seeming to burn more brightly than its own gaping wounds. With cries of fury, the three Nether Herald’s that Vualla had delayed hurried over.

Yet Randidly raised his head and looked away from Lady Iellaya, toward the central area. His eyes widened. It was ridiculous, but… with all the chaos amongst the Nether ranks… Lord Miln and his one thousand elites simply walked forward without contest.

“...how did you manage this?” Randidly asked the air. He felt the chaotic fighting growing more ridiculous by the second, as the vast horde of Nether Beasts cannibalized themselves. There was not a single threat to Lord Miln’s personal unit as they marched in neat lines toward the edge of the Great Rift.

Was this where Lord Miln’s confidence had come from?