One of the Vorathid Sky-Hunters stopped the soldier trying to intercept Reidar, providing him with protection. He sprinted toward the barracks, leaped, and grabbed the edge of the roof. He pulled himself up in one motion.

“STOP HIM!” At that point, even Jorik had to intervene.

Hundreds of church members surged toward him, and Reidar’s summons intercepted them.

The Vorathid Sky-Hunters dove from above, their chitinous bodies slamming into the soldiers with bone-jarring force. Claws raked across armor. Wings beat the air into a frenzy. The church members stumbled back, raising their shields as the insects screeched and struck again.

A Paladin broke through the defensive line and rushed toward Reidar, but an Archon Rift-Lord intercepted the charge, stepping into his path to halt the momentum. When the Paladin swung his mace, the summon’s clawed hand shot out, seizing the weapon’s head in midair.

To the left, three priests circled with their palms glowing blue as they prepared offensive spells, but a swarm of Vorathid Sky-Foragers descended before they could cast their skills.

The insects drove their stingers into the gaps in the priests’ armor, spraying acid that burned through both metal and fabric, forcing the priests to scatter and flail at the bugs as their spell formations fell apart.

Reidar didn’t look back, though the clash of steel on chitin and the screams of dying Sky-Hunters echoed behind him. Notifications flashed in his vision as his units fell, yet he ignored the system logs, trusting that the summons would hold the line because they had to.

A soldier lunged from behind a crate with a sword aimed at Reidar’s legs, only for a Luminous Sentinel to step in and take the strike against its stone body. Sparks flew from the impact, and as the soldier stumbled from the recoil, the Sentinel grabbed him by the collar to hurl him back into the melee.

As Reidar reached the edge of the barracks roof, he didn’t stop because his summons were already busy making sure the church members couldn’t follow him.

He jumped down and landed in the mud, straightening up quickly so he could start the chase. He moved fast enough that the trees blurred past him, and he could see Mara’s white robes flashing against the dark green of the forest ahead.

Jorik sprinted away from the barracks and shouted a desperate command for his troops to stop Reidar, but the distance had already stretched beyond what the Church soldiers could close.

His fighters were pinned down by the summons, Jake and Lena.

He watched Vorathid Sky-Hunters tear through his lines while Jake and Lena, realizing that although the summons were dying, they weren’t falling fast enough to provide the mana Mara needed before Reidar reached her.

Jorik’s jaw tightened as he looked at his followers, and he raised his hand to deliver the last order.

“Brothers! Sisters!” he said. “The path of martyrdom calls!” They knew what that meant.

“The circle must be fed! Our lives are nothing compared to the glory that awaits! Fuel the circle with your life! Die for the cause, and the portal will open.”

A priest near the back hesitated before raising a dagger to his own throat, and as others began to follow suit, it became clear that Jorik was ordering them to kill themselves to provide the fuel Mara’s magic circle desperately lacked.

Lena saw that. “REIDAR!” But he had already heard Jorik’s words.

“Shit.”

He turned to look back.

“Get them out!” Reidar said to the Vorathid Sky-Hunters.

He watched with a tight chest as the swarm descended and saw them latch onto Jake and Lena, dragging them upward into the air. Jake’s boots scraped through the mud, and for a split second, Reidar felt a pang of guilt at the sight of his friend struggling, despite him doing that just to save them.

“Reidar! What are you doing?!”

He didn’t reply.

“REIDAR!”

Reidar gritted his teeth.

He forced himself to resist the urge to glance over his shoulder to check on his friends one last time. The trees became nothing more than indistinct streaks of green and brown bleeding together, and then he turned his entire focus down to a single point—the flash of white robes that continued to weave and dance between the trunks ahead of him.

Hoping they would be ok, that they would get out of the portal radius in time, he fueled his determination.

He was close at that point. He could feel the distortion in the air created by the magic circle and the portal that was being formed before he even reached her—the way the light bent inward, shimmering around Mara as if reality itself was buckling under the strain. The portal was forming fast, and even if he tried to escape, he would not make it in time.

He threw himself forward in a lunge.

His hand slammed around her wrist. She twisted, trying to wrench free, but he clamped down with everything he had. He knew his grip was pathetic compared to hers—he was a Summoner, and his S.H.I.E.L.D. attribute was a joke compared to hers—but he refused to let go. It didn’t matter anyway.

His job was not to actually stop her, but to bring her with him. He couldn’t stop the magic circle’s completion. It was too late now. The church was likely waiting for exactly that to happen.

Reidar tried multiple times to send his summons, but the church didn’t allow that. With all those buffs, with all those numbers, not only did they kill the summons, but when they didn’t, they focused on Lena and Jake.

It was their plan all along; there was no doubt about it. They wanted to either make him try to reach Mara or fuel the portal slowly. It didn’t change things for them. But that didn’t change the situation: Reidar couldn’t escape unless the church members got focused on killing themselves.

That was the only reason Jake and Lena got out of there.

The portal tore open, flooding his sight with a light that rippled like corrupted water. He saw Mara’s eyes go wide with panic as she understood that, if she teleported away, all her efforts, all the sacrifices, would be for naught, because Reidar would go with her.

There was only one thing she could do, and that was to allow Reidar to bring her with him. But she knew that, as much as she opened a portal here, she could do it again on the other side of the portal.

Then, the void swallowed them both.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep