Reidar sprinted down the long, tree-columned corridor toward the ballroom. As he ran, Reidar thought about what he had to do.

He didn’t have a plan for a direct confrontation yet because the math of it was a problem. Killing Mara wasn’t impossible.

In theory, it should have been straightforward—he was Level 549, and she was Level 533, which meant he had the level advantage, the attribute advantage, and an army of summons.

But there was one problem: she could teleport.

<I can’t just walk in there either,> Reidar thought. <The second she sees me, she’ll teleport behind me and end it. She’s a mage, but she’s not squishy. She grew her S.H.I.E.L.D. back home.>

It didn’t matter how strong his summons were or how many of them he had. If Mara spotted him in the chaos, she could just blink across the room and kill him before he could react. He needed a way to kill her without her ever seeing his face.

Mara was a mage in theory, but Reidar knew she didn’t invest in mana as much as he did. Besides, it was different for creatures without the system.

They couldn’t actually invest points in one of the attributes in the same way a person with the system would.

The system gave choices through visual inputs, menus, and confirmation prompts. A person could decide exactly where their points went.

Creatures without the system could do something similar by will, focusing on developing certain attributes over others, but it wasn’t the same, and it wasn’t as precise because it wasn’t as controlled.

Mara had shown him she was much stronger physically than he was. Back in Ashwick, she’d matched Lena in close combat. She’d traded blows with Jake. Both of them were melee fighters with high S.H.I.E.L.D. attributes.

That meant Mara had grown in a way that brought her S.H.I.E.L.D. up too, not just her A.C.U.M.E.N. Otherwise, she wouldn’t have been able to fight against Lena and Jake back in Ashwick. If she were a typical glass-cannon mage, they would have crushed her in seconds.

But she was still a mage at her core. She could teleport, and she could cast high-level spells. This meant her A.C.U.M.E.N. had to be high, even if it wasn’t the only attribute she had focused on during her time since the apocalypse.

<So, how do I do this?>

As he reached a wide intersection leading toward the main hall, a sudden spike of mental feedback hit him. The connection to his Archons in the city was flickering. Through the shared vision of his rearguard, he saw the massacre.

Fourteen thousand Archons had become twelve thousand. Then eleven. Then nine. The Vorathid Sky-Hunters were being swatted out of the air by the hundreds. The Titans crushed them. The Ignis carved through them.

Around 90% of his summons in the city had been destroyed. The titans and elite Ignis patrols had finally stopped playing with the decoys and were heading toward the palace, drawn by the mana spike below the vortex.

“Shit,” Reidar said. “

Reidar didn’t have much time before the monsters reached the palace. Minutes at best, maybe less, and the portal wasn’t ready yet.

Through the Sky-Hunter watching Mara, Reidar could see the portal was still being charged. The lines of the magic circle glowed brighter, but the portal itself hadn’t opened.

The vortex above the city was spinning faster, but that didn’t actually mean anything. It was just a visual clue of the mana gathering toward the magic circle.

For a second, Reidar considered allowing the monsters to reach the palace, thinking that their indiscriminate aggression would force Mara to fight them and create an opening for him to kill her.

However, as he thought it through, he realized that once the portal opened, the enormous pressure would turn the gateway into a vacuum capable of sucking in anything nearby.

If the monsters were present during that event, they would be pulled through to Earth, spilling an army of Level 550 to 650 creatures into Earth, where defenses wouldn’t stand a chance, especially since a single titan could level a city and a pack of elite Ignis could slaughter thousands.

<I cannot let that happen.>

Since he had to prevent the monsters from reaching the palace, he resolved to fortify the position and create a defense capable of holding out long enough for him to cross the portal and kill Mara.

He knew he would need to leave his summons behind with specific orders to destroy the magic circle because, otherwise, the portal would remain open forever, which was a risk he could not take.

<I need to summon an army immediately.>

Reidar reached into his mana as he ran, pulling hard to draw upon the reserves that had accumulated from his passive regeneration.

[Skill Activated: Summon Archon Rift-Lords]

Rifts opened in the corridor ahead of him. Hundreds of them. The Archons poured out and filled the hallway, spilling into side rooms, climbing over each other to make space.

[Skill Activated: Summon Mana-Forged Dreadmaw]

The massive construct appeared in the entrance hall behind him. The floor cracked under its weight. The ceiling groaned.

[Skill Activated: Summon Undying Legion]

[Skill Activated: Summon Quadraginta]

[Skill Activated: Summon Twin Obsidian Siege-Breakers]

[Skill Activated: Summon Verdant Sovereign]

[Skill Activated: Summon Avatar of Primal Convergence]

[Skill Activated: Summon Void-Claws]

Reidar shared every skill he had—including Emperor’s Decree, Wellspring of Vitality, Gaze of the Pariah, and all the other skills—along with all the summoning skills in his arsenal, a massive exertion that nearly drained him.

However, the sheer volume of summons immediately began feeding his regeneration back to full as his minions summoned more creatures, causing his army to swell rapidly past ten, twenty, and thirty thousand until it reached forty thousand units.

The palace became so crowded that the creatures were forced to spill out of the building, packing the hallways, rooms, and courtyards, while others climbed the walls, perched on the roofs, and stood guard at every entrance.

<That was too much.>

Although Reidar staggered against the wall as the mana depletion hit him like a nauseating wave that spun his head and blurred his vision, the passive regeneration from forty thousand and increasing creatures kicked in, causing the blue bar in his vision to slowly but steadily refill.

“Hold the walls,” Reidar said to the Siege-breakers and the Archons, before instructing the Verdant Sovereign to reinforce the structure by using its roots to block the side entrances and strengthen the walls.

The giant summons were positioned to stand around the palace, with the Dreadmaw and Siege-Breakers guarding the main entrance while the Void-Claws prepared to intercept any monsters that breached the outer defenses.

The Verdant Sovereigns were tasked to reinforce the palace itself, spreading vines across walls to fill cracks and driving roots deep to stabilize the foundation, turning the entire structure into a fortified position, as it was meant to be when it was built by the Ignis.

Meanwhile, the Avatars of Primal Convergence assumed a passive role focused on healing rather than fighting, ensuring their energy flowed through the army to keep the summons alive as long as possible. When Reidar checked these defenses through the Overmind Consciousness, he judged that while the palace was not impenetrable against monsters of such size and strength; it was solid enough to hold for at least a few minutes.

<That should be enough.>

When Reidar shifted his focus back to the Vorathid Sky-Hunter spying on Mara in the ballroom, he saw her standing in the center of the magic circle with her hands raised, surrounded by lines that glowed brighter and pulsed with energy as the portal formed at an accelerated rate.

<She must have felt the mana spike from my skills.>

Her semi-feral mind seemingly realized that either Reidar or the monsters had found her, and because leaving the circle now would mean losing the portal, she resorted to the only strategy available to her weakened mind: hastening the process.

<That actually works for me.>

Reidar switched back to his own vision. He was close to the ballroom now.

He needed to get inside without her seeing him. That was the key. If he could position himself correctly and use his summons as cover, he might be able to take her by surprise.

“Move in.”

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep