Chapter 199: Swift Kick

Gurns kept his eyes on Umara even as a projectile of some noxious gas exploded nearby. All around them were makeshift tents numbering in the tens of thousands, each one accommodating one or two soldiers each. There was an entire division out here, but it was only the fourth day of the expedition and they were already getting hammered. 

Umara sighed in thought, wholly unconcerned by the alarms ringing around her demanding she muster with the rest of her squadron and platoon. Even so, Gurns saw how she brought out her Foci and cast a quick spell, the red gas deposited around them unable to approach after she raised a barrier of vapor. 

“Let’s disregard my mother for a second. Please. Can you, or can you not, get me in?”

“I can.”

Her gaze leveled back on him. Gurns noticed how the mana around him fluctuated under her mere gaze. “So why the hesitation? You know I want to join. Or are you questioning whether or not I’m worth the trouble?”

He shrugged, “In essence, yes. Your mother isn’t going to like it and I’m going to have to deal with her ire, especially since I’ll need to go over her head to get you moved.”

She combed some of her gray hair out of the corner of her mouth, her displeasure apparent despite the relatively professional front she tried to keep. Even then, she spoke to him without any of the formality his position should demand, “Yet you’re here. You’re talking to me, your interest is apparent, and you know I’ve already given you the affirmative. So what do you want from me?”

“I’d like it if you could convince your mother for me, but I’m not counting on it. Instead, I want to give you a mission,” Gurns waved, the two walking to another part of the camp.

“I’ve got a squadron here, 2 Chiefs, 3 First Commanders. I want you to join them and eliminate some high value targets beyond this battlefield. Perform well and I’ll take you with me. If you become a liability, you can either convince your mother to let you join or wait until your next advancement.”

She glanced over at him while the Bombardos in the distance continued to shit on the camp, “Putting my combat power to the test?”

“Not just your combat power, but yes. I’ve yet to see you fight, your most impressive record is escaping a Corrupted, and that was with Tana. So impress me. Convince me you’re worth the investment.”

He finished his words and waved to the tent they arrived at. Umara could feel the Auras within despite the occupants’ attempts at concealing them. Not even Tana could escape her senses despite that being her specialty, and the Chiefs she was about to face weren’t even at that sheer level. 

She felt like she could see them through the fabric, her eyes tracking their figures as they were revealed under the tent flap. She and Gurns stepped inside, all eyes falling on them. 

“Brack.” Gurns called out.

One of the Chiefs stepped out, “Sir.”

“This is Umara. She’s going to be joining your team for your strike mission. Don’t baby her. If she wants to show off, let her.”

“Hm, alright.” Brack nodded, giving Umara a one over before turning back to the table in the center of the tent. It had a map on it and they seemed to be going over the mission plan. Umara could see markings denoting their route and strike area, as well as pictures of their targets. 

Gurns stepped out of the tent, “Carry on.”

Umara guessed she was on her own now, turning back to the table and focusing on Brack. He was a stout knight dressed in full armor, unmarked with the Kingdom’s seal or anything that might tell her he was actually a Chief. Special operations tended to keep information a secret according to what Umara knew, even information on how powerful someone was. All they had was their uniform and colors, which was all anybody outside needed to be concerned with.

“I guess I’ll go back over the brief. Our mission is to take out this King Blood Royal of Anarchy. He’s supposed to sit around Authority 9 according to the last team that spotted him. This one has an entourage though, two Authority 8 Royals, one knight-type, one warlock-type.” Brack pointed to the two pictures on the table below the supposed King Blood Royal.

“Ceyhun and I will be handling the King Blood.” Umara glanced at the other Chief, another Knight, “You three will handle his entourage. The King Blood is supposed to be leading a small force to flank this expedition. Our job is to stop the King Blood. The small fry can be handled by whoever happens to come across them later. We’ll be deploying by bike. Any questions?”

Silence pervaded. Umara just glanced at the two First Commanders next to her. They were Authority 8 but their Auras were sharp. She was glad that special operations had higher standards than the rest. She felt like everyone around her was normally subpar for their Authority. This level of competence was new. 

Not quite at her level, but she would take what she could get. 

With the briefing done, the five left the tent, gathered supplies, and boarded their own bikes. 

……

“DIsmount.”

Umara felt it before Brack spoke. The King Blood had sensed them even though they didn’t have line of sight yet. They were behind a large crag. 

As soon as the order was given everyone jumped off their bikes and threw them into spatial storages. Umara had her own so she didn’t have to worry about having one of the others take care of her stuff as they set up. 

Umara adjusted the bracer around her forearm, her Foci settling into her hand. It was a new one her mother had bought her, one more than suited for Authority 10 warlocks, let alone her. Unfortunately her demands for a magic buffer were extreme, as was the demand for precision. This was about the best Foci Umara could get before it would start to rival her own mother’s, and that one was a family heirloom passed down from the Ancestors. The only reason this one hadn’t cost far more was because Umara’s demand for power supplementation was negligible, as well as the fact that they had bought the materials from their friends at the Whetted City.

The Foci was a geometric cubical cluster of naturally formed milky white crystals cast into an odd curved diamond cradle of liquid White Crystal, hardened into a single object. The geometric crystals had accumulated Authority 10 level Magika by themselves in an underground deposit, not to mention the Authority 10 White Crystal they had cast the entire thing into. 

She had the option to mount the Foci to a staff or something of the like, but Umara decided to have her mother splurge and get it enchanted to a bracer and glove for her forearm. 

The new piece of armor made the Foci float above and around her hand, however she wanted it. With her skill she barely had to worry about operating the enchantment. Now, the Foci was always there and within easy access. She could touch it directly for precise small-scale spells or have it float in front of her for large-scale spells, and the entire thing was bound to her Crest. With her secret pocket space on top of that, she wouldn’t have to worry about losing it unless she was about to die.

The tips of the curved diamond cradle were also sharp. She had used it to cave in skulls a few times. 

That singular Foci gave Umara more confidence than any squad the military could put her in. She finally had a tool capable of handling her method of spell formation, capable of absorbing all the information her Aura poured into her mind. She didn’t know how long it would remain that way but for now, it was more than enough. 

The squadron approached their battlefield, the King Blood Royal having stopped in its tracks with the rest of its escort. Umara could very clearly feel the Anarchy coming off it. Yet, being a mere descendant of the Icon she had witnessed with her own eyes, it was wholly inferior, laughable to her. She couldn’t help her smile. 

Which quickly disappeared once she saw the army around the King Blood, composed of at least 400 Authority 6 and 7 monsters. 

Umara let out an annoyed breath. There was no way her squad would focus on anything other than their targets. Without her, they would simply ignore the surrounding escort force and fight their personal battles, but since she was here and was the odd man out, she didn’t have a target.

Sure enough, Brack gave the command. 

“Umara, focus on the surrounding force, keep them off us.”

“Yes sir.”

She simply followed the order, no matter how much it irked her. Gurns told her to impress him, and now she was getting left with the fodder. She knew that he probably wanted to test her ability to work with a team, but the only thing she was ever worried about was sheer lethality. That was the end-all-be-all for someone like her, where a vast majority of her value came from besides her ability to survive long enough to use that lethality. 

Her squad rushed in with no prior warning, the two Chiefs bounding to their target, directly bypassing the rest of the monsters. The hundreds of beasts wanted to jump in and assist their superiors, but as soon as the battle started, the King Blood roared with its blistering aura of Anarchy. None of them got close after that. 

The King Blood, similar to its progenitor, was a six-armed freak wielding several weapons. It attacked with reckless abandon, no rhyme or reason to its form as it sought to simply inflict as much damage as possible. The two Chiefs, being knights, had an easier time handling its attacks. One kept his reach with a spear and the other went in with a sword and shield, attempting to eat most of the King Blood’s ire. 

Umara fell behind as their battles started. The two First Commanders went to do battle with the two Authority 8 escorts, doing their best to bypass the rest of the army like the Chiefs. 

It was clear to Umara that they wouldn’t be able to. They were jumped on and had to fend off several opportunistic monsters while also suffering the attacks of the Royals. 

Umara took that chance, using some air magic and enchantments tied to her boots to jump and carry her into the middle of the army, placing herself between the First Commanders and the hundreds of monsters. 

It was when the monsters lunged at her that she responded with a two handfuls of fire, her Foci floating in front of her chest. 

She reached out to her sides, and two massive walls of fire exploded into being, all the monsters recoiling from the heat. Once they backed away Umara turned down the fuel, cooling the fire significantly, keeping it just hot enough to be a deterrent and keep the only opening, her, the focus. 

“Thank you.” The First Commander’s voice came from behind. Umara just let out a breath, washing away some of the initial heat from the explosion and cooling her body. 

Then she put on her mask, void black with two dark eye sockets, purple wisps glowing within them. 

Her voice seeped through, “Come out, Pup.”

The figure emerged from her shadow. The snout of a wolf, six thick legs, snowy blue fur, two black horns, and two large crystalline wings. Even on all fours its shoulders sat at Umara’s own. It snarled at all the enemies before it. 

Umara’s hand brushed over its back, sinking into its long fur as she whispered, “Time to work, Pup. Let’s buy them time.”

The Foci settled above Umara’s other hand as some of the monsters in front of her mustered the courage to charge. They had numbers, and Umara was but one girl. A Flicker didn’t change much. 

The first to dive forward was an Authority 7 corrupted monkey, which launched its body toward Umara from the side. Before it could get close to her though, Pup lunged and caught the monkey in his jaws, clamping down and crushing the monkey into two pieces. 

The Authority 7 Crystal was left in Pup’s jaws, and despite it still being poisoned, he still shattered it with his teeth, grinding it down and swallowing it like a delicacy. 

Umara had once been worried about that, but it turned out that Flickers were more of an antithesis to the Scourge than she thought. They ate those poisoned crystals and turned it into their own power. Pup’s growth had accelerated massively since she started letting him eat during battles, and now he was as powerful as she was. 

She pat him.

“Don’t get hurt.”

“Awoo!”

Pup howled before lunging in, biting down and swiping long razer sharp claws through flesh and hide. 

Umara raised her Foci from behind her Companion Spirit, a large spell formation blooming before her. It rotated and shifted while it formed, the information within the spell changing on the fly. 

Bolts of compressed flame flew out, piercing into a monster’s body before detonating inside with fire. It was one after another, multiple bolts getting formed with the same spell formation, attacking different targets while the array adapted based on her input. 

It was a method of spellcasting that didn’t require the warlock to create new spell circles for every single individual spell. Instead, by simply recycling the spell and changing the information with every attack, a warlock could cut the computational and energy expenditure a significant amount. Of course, it also demanded that they be able to mentally handle all of the information at any given time, which required great practice. 

Umara was immune from those issues since not only was she enlightened to both her elements, but her Aura meant that the amount of information she handled at any given time could fill multiple Authority 8 Foci devices at once. She had more information than she knew what to do with, and had more than enough mental capacity to handle it all. 

This simply took advantage of that, helped her focus her efforts when she only needed one spell. However, she wasn’t so tunnel-visioned that she only focused on the fodder in front of her. 

Umara glanced back at the First Commanders and watched their battles with the Royals. It was underwhelming to her but that meant she knew exactly what to do to turn the tide. 

With a batch of seconds that her Companion bought her, she suddenly launched a sharp spell at one of the Royals.

The spell snaked under the knight’s arm and hit the Royal right in the wrist, taking its hand off outright. It created a pause in the battle but the knight knew how to take advantage of the opportunity. 

The battle continued, Umara continuing to slaughter the fodder with her Companion while throwing out decisive spells at just the right opportunities toward the battles behind her. The Royals were either wounded or disrupted by her sudden attacks, pissed off to no end that she was interfering in such an underhanded manner, even angrier that their defensive measures were so easily thwarted by her.

Umara just continued fighting. To her Companion, the beasts attacking them were nothing but a hearty meal, especially with her to keep him from getting surrounded and hurt. He could operate without a care in the world for defense, focused on nothing but attacking his prey on a platter, which meant she didn’t have to do much. Pup could wield both Vigor and Mana, like many hybrid beasts that used two of the energies of Magika. Along with his Aura, he could identify openings and opportunities before releasing either crushing physical attacks or sweeping magic attacks. All Umara had to do was enable him. 

As for the Royals, they couldn’t defend against her because she had learned the meaning of the term ‘armor piercing’. 

She didn’t have solid objects to work with but her air and fire magic were enough. Her air magic, especially after learning spatial spells, was capable of incredible devastation. 

She was able learn the spatial spells and then bend them to suit her level. They were incredibly complex spells that demanded vast amounts of power in order to warp and split space. However, if she didn’t want to tear a hole in the fabric of reality and instead settle for simply disrupting the matter on top of it, she could reduce the cost of the spell and enable her air spells to pierce through the thick hides or armor of monsters.

Adding a bit of heat to the mixture meant that piercing into the bodies of tough Royals like the ones nearby was almost easy. Once that happened she developed detonation conditions, armed her spells, and created the very first HEIAP (High-explosive incendiary armor-piercing) Magic Bolts known to this world. 

They still weren’t her most devastating spells, but in exchange for handling complexity, they were energy efficient and made quick work of stubborn enemies. They could also be scaled up with more energy, enabling her to hurt even higher Authority Royals or Knights. 

Her technique only sealed the deal. The precision behind her attacks let her hit the sneakiest shots, threading those needles and hitting an enemy right where it hurt. 

“One down!” Umara’s First Commander announced when one of the Royals fell beneath his blade. He went to assist his partner, the two attacking the second Royal who was already mortally wounded as a result of Umara worsening already heavy attacks. 

“Royals down!” 

They called out when the second fell, however, that’s when Umara sensed something and turned, calling.

“Watch out!”

“Get down!”

One of the Chief’s voices echoed right after hers. Just then, the King Blood appeared, heavily injured, and cleaved one of the First Commanders in two. 

Umara was already forming a spell, space rippling like water when she launched a spinning sphere toward the King Blood. It chopped down with an axe in response, hitting the sphere dead on. 

The tearing space hidden within the sphere shredded the axe, sending streaks of metal flying. The axe turned into nothing but a heap of metal but that could be just as much of a weapon as any other. It held its weapon and turned when Ceyhun lunged forward and sent his spear through the King Blood’s chest.

It let out a shriek, Umara’s mind coming under attack yet easily shrugging off its power. She saw blood stream from the other First Commander’s nose and eyes though. He didn’t succumb to Anarchy but he was definitely injured. 

With a thought Umara wrapped the First Commander in a stream of compressed air and dragged him out of the fight, back near her and Pup. She dropped a recovery pill in his mouth while he slumped on the floor before turning back to the King Blood, Pup holding off the rest of the horde. There weren’t much left anyway. 

The Chiefs moved to finish off the King Blood, but Umara didn’t mind bringing out a spell to help.

Umara muttered, “You want me to impress you? Fine, watch this.”

She stepped forward and snatched her Foci, infusing power directly and wiping the buffer before filling it with new information. 

She could sense the space around her and took over the area with a domain formed of her Aura. All the ambient mana was locked without contest and she prepared a spell over the entire area. 

She felt the space carry her slightly, her sheer level of control affording her this small advantage as she was carried into the middle of the fight between the Chiefs and King Blood Royal. 

She found an opportunity as the spell completed, space warping under her command. 

“Move!”

She yelled at the Chiefs, and it was Ceyhun with the spear who backed off. Umara slipped in past him, her free hand raising. 

The King Blood turned to her, and she knew it could feel the threat she posed. However, unlike every other being in the world, those under Anarchy cared not for their own safety, and so it simply released its strongest attack right at her. 

She responded with a point of the index and middle finger, drawing her nail across space. 

Brack and Ceyhun both felt their eyes widen as the King Blood’s sword cleaved through Umara’s head, her fingers missing its body by a foot as they drew a line of darkness down the side. Right after she finished her movement though, space shifted, Umara’s body appearing a foot to the side, the line of darkness appearing over the King Blood’s body, as if she had never actually missed, twisting reality to whatever she intended for it to be. 

The line of darkness imploded down the middle of the King Blood’s body, sucking half of it in before exploding outward in a shower of red mist. It was very, very dead now, and it’s sword had entirely missed Umara. 

The rest of its remaining body collapsed, but Umara recoiled with it, curses leaving her clenched teeth. 

“Argh, shit! Still had to get in one little shot, huh?! Freakish son of a bitch! Who the fuck sees through that?! Fuck that hurts!”

She stomped her boot before sending a swift kick into the King Blood’s corpse, her hand putting pressure on the side of her head. Brack saw a serrated cut down her temple, stopping just at her cheek and bleeding profusely. 

He disregarded her repeated vulgarities and the near impossibility of the situation as he and Ceyhun went to finish off the rest of the horde. 

After all of a couple minutes, they finished the last one off. With that they just had to retreat, retrieving the dead First Commander’s body and heading back to the camp. 

Gurns watched from afar, a wide grin across his face as he chuckled in glee. 

“What a damn freak.”

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