After the failure of the first wave to get past our outer layer of traps, the rest of the army stays just beyond their reach. Mathematically, I know exactly how much space forty thousand troops occupy, but the sight of them hits me in the gut. That is a larger crowd than all other attacks before today added together if my math is even close to correct and the weakest amongst them could probably hold out even against an HLZ beast for a few moves. In this last attack, the lines are meticulous and the organization surpasses anything we saw back on Earth even from the best militaries.

The shamans start a grand work of magic, as the grunt soldiers dig trenches, removing obstacles and smoothing out their path with a mixture of physical strength and occasionally magic.

The main group of shamans shape runes intrinsically linked with their chanting. Runes simply incomplete without the chanting, but unmistakably runes.

Each symbol is a dozen meters wide but the enemy just keeps digging wider and wider even as the only two magical cannons in reach keep shooting at their mana shields. Canons that put to shame any other we had made before.

Drawing and focusing fireballs with roughly 5 thousand Fire mana a hint of Earth give the attacks both heft and range. Turrets with a runic pattern engraved on copper alongside a decent amount of silver and even a hint of gold.

The result is not quite like Merlin’s magma balls, which would have required an order of magnitude more expertise and a few pounds of gold. But even our limited resources and understanding of the runic language let us extend to an impressive 1100 meters maximum range.

Through the network, I feel the mana being drained from their shields as each shot hits, but it is not enough to break through, not nearly enough. The shamans just draw more mana in from all the other members of their army… Something just like Lord Max used to great effect, a system function that so far we hadn’t gained access to, though it is only useful in its practicality, given that anyone this far in the game with a few hours of training can gift mana manually.

Though there is another small convenience for the enemy of this being a system function. I can’t even sense the mana being transferred over to interrupt it, not that such an action would be useful in these conditions.

As the main runic formation keeps growing, my own efforts and that of the hundreds of other seeds waiting to disrupt them and help me and Aspen drain away from the mana just keep going.

Trying to delay the formation is futile. Even with all the help, a thousand Shamans led by an actual Arch Shaman along with Surjrahh, our Arch shaman’s son, is way too much to halt.

I look at Ahjrahh trying to know what passes on his head just before he hurries back and touches my arm to activate the telepathy skill.

What they are making… now is clear. It is a summoning… for all intents and purposes.

What the hell are they trying to summon?

That I have no way of knowing.

If you could hear them talking…? I will send a few comm runes… He shakes his head while staring at the root representation of their attempts in the lap.

That won’t work. Their choices so far have barely narrowed down which spirits can be summoned this way… thousands are still in the running. Only the final verses of the chant will determine which actual summons. Even if I could hear them perfectly, it would give us seconds of warning and they will sense any attempt we make. Better to pay attention all around. That is beside the fact that you don’t have enough translators that speak my language, only one or two have passable ears.

Can you give me an Idea?

Not yet. I’m not sure even if we knew which summons would be enough. I’m trying to decide if I should recommend we evacuate.

I can drain away mana at an absurd rate. I say confidently.

Enough to match a thousand shamans? No

By myself.. no, but I’m not alone. And if I don’t have to deal with it after it leaves my grasp, aspen and a few others can store all of it away. I may even distract enough of their shamans that the total mana inputted will be diminished by a significant margin. To top it all off, I have Qi to wreak havoc.”

“Your Qi… use a little for me to test the viability of your plan.”

I send a tendril that he tries to grab control of and fails miserably, but we both know that is not the real measure. I poke the thread through his body and even inside his body, he can’t affect Qi, though the connection becomes a little fainter.

That is interesting. I can’t simply form a fireball inside of him, even doing that inside a tree needs me to overcome its inherent passive will, but as he tries to send his own magical resource out, my Qi melds with it, waiting in ambush and for every point of my Qi, a dozen of his Mana becomes entangled. He fails to form a fireball, and hope lifts my heart. This worked way better than my hopes. Maybe we have a chance…

That is until he spins the mana and my Qi simply floats away using the very small tangibility I imparted to it to make it effective at ‘tangling’ his mana.

A fireball springs to life in its full glory.

“Excellent.” He says in English, surprising me ever so slightly. His vocabulary is very limited even with all the studies he has done, but he is a fast learner.

I approach and touch his arm again so we can talk properly.

How…? I barely slowed you more than a few seconds.

I have experience and I was expecting something like this. You won’t find anyone at my level there, with one possible exception. Even if they are all hand-picked from the best, they can’t all be Arch shamans lowered in skill level and stats.

Really? Arch shamans ‘lowered’ to the position of shamans?

Unlikely, but possible. And it would be a nightmare for us to deal with. They have picked the best available to send our way… a few would have been much higher level. Stats and skill levels will be the same as we came to expect but this looks like an army with more battle experience than any other wave.

I let his words sink in my mind before relaying it all to Merlin and Richard before I turn my attention back to making trouble for the enemy.

With a tread of my Qi, I make glass marble sized fireballs and shoot them in the gaps of the enemy’s Armor.

I can almost feel as Merlin scratches his head for an Idea. Any way to blunt their effectiveness. Nobody wanted to evacuate as Ahjrahh’s initial reaction suggested.

Ten minutes after they arrive, the enemy starts splitting. Half keeps in the main formation ready to drive straight at us, while the rest starts moving around in ten groups. A few shamans accompany each, reducing the shaman complement at the back handling the summoning, but not nearly as much as I had hoped. They would be stupid to send groups with no magical protection, we would simply obliterate them with such ease that it wouldn’t even be funny. But the reduction is not nearly enough to make my job measurably easier.

At least the non-magical troops seemed to follow different rules than the goblins on the HLZ. These can’t send mana slashes or make any use of their mana.

But even if they are all level 80 and above with magical support, something I will only confirm when they are in inspection range, they are still much more vulnerable than their 100+ kin inside the HLZ.

The groups take some three minutes to get in place. I keep trying to delay the shaman’s work marring the hundred and fifty meters wide runic dug trenches on the ground, but they keep it in place with sheer determination and a lot of mana.

Then it starts.

Not a slow and ponderous summoning that Ahjrahh told me about, but something different. I feel the muscles in his face contort in shock.

Something that feels to be more akin to our portal than any common summoning is just a few kilometers away. Twenty, thirty, fifty, a hundred thousand mana rushes in roughly guided.

I pull the roots and try to break the earthworks, but the very mana seems to be resisting… somehow.

“Grasa Kishiarahh!” Our Arch Shaman screams in awe and fright.

Everything fades in the background, even as I feel him pulling on the mana batteries and summoning a lightning storm…

I thought Arch Shaman’s needed help to summon lightning like that…

An instant later the thought is gone as my mind is a thousand miles away and everything but my goal fades. I reach within me and pull at all I’m, as my Qi drives into the working. Over a hundred Qi each second trying ot gum up the works.

Aspen understands the danger and increases the suction force so much turning on the backup split to pull mana away from key points in the enemy formation. But even the loose will threaded in the mana is enough to keep most of it in place.

There is just so much that the arch shamans can’t hope to keep a tight leash all of it, but on the other side of the coin, they have enough even after my interference.

A warping of reality at the center becomes all my world. I try to understand what is happening and I send my senses over, to find any point of leverage, even as my body continues interfering on automatic. I try to grasp the warping of space, something that should be only in the realm of people like me cheating the system or of much higher leveled beings, but this is not just the pinprick reaching reality overlayed on top of another, this is both simpler and more complex. And it reaches further.

I stare and try to twist and break it every which way, at the same time that awe at what they did reaches deep within my soul. I burn it all in my mind for later contemplation in my memory palace.

Lightning falls from the sky, nearly buckling a very small dot on the shield, but it holds. A few dozen shamans head in to reinforce it.

Large magma balls lazily form an arc and hit the shield sending another few to reinforce it, a field of fire forms inside the shield that is my curtesy and a few more ready to deal with my shenanigans.

Qi rushes out accumulating around the mass of Mana. Most of it still holding in place even as the warping in space grows.

I guess they know how to avoid many of the pit traps of messing with space in the instance.

Intertwining my own resource through the runes gives me a few insights I wouldn’t have expected to learn, but I file it all away to explore later.

A different sort of portal forms, my intent, all my being observes it as I get ready to twist the enemy’s working into uselessness if I can, but the portal that forms…

I reach with my skill One Step Towards Connection and I KNOW, nothing physical can cross, or rather… nothing traditionally physical can cross it… only… maybe…

A confusing mess of impressions crowds my mind as a blob of flesh forms around the space.

How?

Words and doubts are for another time.

The hatred in Suhjrah’s face, his creepy green lips exposing sharp teeth and a torrent that incorporates a bit of his unconscious control of Aether. He gives himself to the summoning until there is nothing left….

Hatred is a powerful emotion, but so often leaves the person fueled by it hollow.

A shell, that reaches deep, warping someone worse than whatever the system’s resurrection could in a cycle or two. Perhaps even worse than a lot more. Most seemed to forget their names after just a few cycles, but hatred was insidious.

I twist space trying to induce a similar interference that the system does for our portals as a thousand points of Qi mixed in forms its own runes in between others.

Both effects feed on each other.

A cycle as I try to sing from side to side and each movement warps the enemy's work building momentum like I’m timing swings on a tree branch. The process slows, the flesh that comes in marred and of different colors, but it is not enough to completely halt the enemy.

I keep a tight hold, making sure none of my Qi touches the core of the runes and supercharge it making the problem worse.

Seconds tick by into eternity until it s over, a form some 6 meters tall, with arms thicker than my torso. A skin that looks to be a hybrid of clay and leather tougher than anything short of mithril.

My connection drops and I fall to the ground blinded by the form of the enemy.

Not in the visual sense, but in the overwhelming sense of information from connecting to this giant.

“Titan.” Ahjrahh whispers and a shiver run down my back.

“My book said there are not supposed to be any titans alive. Weren’t they wiped out in the invasion of their planet?” I ask incredulously.

He looks blankly at me to which I touch his shoulder pleading for an answer.

You shouldn’t know even that much.

Tell me.

This titan is no longer free. Only a captured spirit, but that is bad enough.

The lumbering steps forward seemed to vibrate the ground and the walls way more than they should from a being nearly a kilometer away.

How bad is it?

BAD. Very, very bad.