She rose higher into the air, the folds of her dress trailing in the wind like drifting silk, every movement casually done.
From that elevated perch, her voice carried into the air like an echo. "The ability I used just now… it's one of my own creations."
Liam's brow lifted slightly, gaze narrowing with interest.
"Although…" She paused, her tone descending, not loud, not thunderous, but precise, like a single flawless note cleaving through the open air.
"I only used the external aspect of it. Not its real function."
Liam let out a small chuckle, his arms folding over his chest as he casually tilted his weight onto one leg.
"And I'm supposed to run now? Come on," he beckoned lazily with a flick of his fingers, "let me see it then. The actual purpose."
"Very well," Mize replied flatly, unbothered by the taunt.
She lifted her hand, fingers spreading apart with an eerie stillness, and light began to slip between them.
Thin streams of pale radiance peeled from her fingertips, dividing and fanning outward like drifting shards of broken starlight.
They exploded outward in the next breath, no sound, just sudden dispersion, scattering through the air like rain made of pure essence.
Each sliver found its mark, sinking silently into the land below, into roots, soil, branches, and brambles.
Mize's gaze swept the battlefield, impassive. "I too have numbers at my disposal."
The earth answered.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The battlefield convulsed.
Twisting vines, once merely oversized tendrils swarming Liam's summoned knights, shuddered mid-lash.
For a brief moment, the knights seized the opportunity and drove their blades in… but the vines didn't recoil.
Instead, they grew.
From every shadow and split in the earth, new ones surged upward, massive, winding, like living siege towers dragging themselves from beneath the floor.
The knights were overwhelmed in seconds. Metallic arms flailed, but dozens were caught, bound, and crushed like tin before they even raised their weapons.
Half the force fell in moments, swallowed and twisted into heaps of mangled armor.
And then the real change began.
The vines shifted again, spines cracking, surfaces hardening, structures taking form.
Within seconds, the tangle of growth reshaped into towering figures.
Vaguely humanoid, grotesquely massive.
Ten meters tall, at least, and uniform in build.
Their right arms morphed, elongating into enormous blade-like limbs, dark and gleaming with hardened bark.
The left took shape into thick, shield-like bulwarks, pulsing faintly with green light.
Then, they moved.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Thousands of them stepped forward in eerie sync, their sheer weight causing the ground to rumble beneath their march.
The terrain groaned, the ground trembled.
They leaped without delay, crashing into the remaining summoned knights like a wave of living wood.
Boom!
A lone knight barely managed to look up before a wooden blade, thick as a boulder, wide as a wagon, sliced through the air and came down with the speed of a falling star.
Boom!
The blade connected. Steel crumpled. The knight didn't just fall, he ceased to exist beneath the weight, flattened.
And just like that, the massacre began.
Liam watched in silence for a beat, eyes narrowing.
His knights were strong relatively speaking. They were Tier 3, built for continuous combat and unrelenting pressure against the enemy.
But it didn't matter now.
Not against this.
"Now, this is bad" Liam's mouth twitched from the corner.
They were being outclassed completely.
"It's all physical…" Liam muttered, voice low. "But every one of them, Tier 5, easily, just off brute force alone."
Another knight was knocked clean off the ground, hurled sideways like driftwood in a storm.
It passed by Liam midair, close enough for the shockwave to tug at his hair. He didn't flinch.
"And yet…" He studied their movements closely, eyes tracing the patterns.
"They're not enhanced. No external energy. No artificial boosts. They move like they're alive."
The way they responded to openings, shifting stances, guarding one another, adapting, wasn't mindless.
But neither was it intelligent.
Liam clicked his tongue, correcting himself. "No… not sentient. More like, naturally born. Living, breathing things."
He raised his gaze to the figure floating above it all, Mize, arms outstretched like a composer directing an orchestra of monstrosities.
"Nature control, fused with soul-type abilities," he mused. "She's giving them life."
A low laugh escaped him, half-bemused, half-impressed. "Seriously? She's just casually bestowing life now?"
His eyes crinkled with genuine amusement. "This is getting ridiculous."
"And here I thought I am quite ridiculously powerful myself already"
The knights continued to fall. Blades cracked, shields shattered, one after another being flattened by the onslaught of wooden giants.
The sheer disparity was obvious, no amount of coordination could save them from the size, weight, and overwhelming numbers pressing in.
Liam exhaled slowly and shook his head, more out of appreciation than concern.
"Looks like I've gotta step it up too. Otherwise, fighting against this mess of Tier 5 beasts alone might be a little tricky."
Then, he crouched slightly, one hand lowering to touch the uneven ground.
Fingers splayed across the cracked surface.
A smile played at the corners of his lips, unhurried. "Alright then…"
Then it started.
A low hum slipped beneath his feet.
Zoom!
A ripple of darkness bloomed from under Liam's boots.
It didn't stop. The ripple swelled outward in layers, expanding fast, swallowing the fractured terrain.
Jagged stone, broken ruins, and torn soil vanished beneath the spreading ink.
But it wasn't quite consumption. The land wasn't erased, it was overlaid, submerged under a living, pulsating ocean of shadows that rolled in waves.
The remaining knights, sensing the shift, didn't wait for orders.
One by one, they melted into the darkness, seamlessly slipping through the veil to avoid the incoming threat.
Above them, the towering wooden constructs, the giants, paused mid-step.
Their twisted forms, though blind and eyeless, somehow registered the change.
They straightened, their heads turning around as if they were discerning this scene.
Grouped together, they braced.
Shields at the ready, swords gripped tightly, forming a protective ring.
Liam's gaze swept over them, his eyes narrowing with interest. "They can respond to environmental changes... Not bad," he murmured.
And right on cue, the sea of darkness began to stir again.
Its surface rippled unnaturally, a strange rhythm pulsing beneath the shadows.
The whole area, once forest, now completely overwritten.
The tree-giants shifted formation, their heavy roots thudding as they moved in sync.
A thousand-ton rhythm. They drew tighter, the ring closing in around Liam's forces at the center, forming a fortified circle.
Liam took in their numbers at a glance. "Two thousand of them?" he chuckled, a hint of admiration slipping through. "Hah… this is getting fun."
As the swirling dark began to take shape, amorphous forms rising and twisting into vague silhouettes, the trees moved again.
Swords raised overhead in eerie unison, each figure aligned perfectly like they were extensions of one will.
Then came the light.
A greenish glow enveloped each blade.
Not a shine, not an aura, more like a living coating, mossy and dense, flickering at the edges.
The moment it surfaced, Liam blinked slowly. "That's… definitely bad."
And before he could say more, it began.
All at once, the giants brought their weapons down.
Thousands of swords slashed through the air with a single, unified motion.
Broad arcs of energy shot out from every blade, crescent-shaped waves slicing outward like invisible scythes.
Zing…
The air didn't tremble.
The slash left no echo. It just passed in a flicker of one's eyes.
At first, it looked like nothing had happened.
The arcs tore across over a hundred meters, but the shadow soldiers, barely formed, half-submerged in the dark, stood unaffected.
Until they didn't.
Every single one within that hundred-meter radius froze.
No flash. No warning. Their bodies, half-shadow and half-matter, locked in place the moment the energy crossed them, like puppets with cut strings.
Liam's expression turned sharper.
He vanished from the spot and tracked the outer edges of the radius where the rest of the soldiers were now rising, fully formed, awakened, crawling out of the shadow-drenched ground.
Then the delay snapped.
"Hah!" Liam let out a breathless laugh, his voice edged with disbelief. "What a ridiculous skill…"
The aftermath came like thunder.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
The entire segment of the battlefield, everything within the slashed range, erupted.
The shadow soldiers caught in the radius were obliterated instantly, torn apart before they even moved.
The earth fractured, violently upheaved by force alone.
Massive shockwaves exploded outward as if the ground itself had detonated.
The wind howled through the chaos, not just loud, but a tearing howling force that whipped through the air like a tsunami.
Tens of thousands of shadow soldiers, all in that one area, simply ceased to exist.
Chunks of debris, massive boulders shaped like shattered cubes, were launched into the sky.
They arced high, silhouetted against the black background, then came crashing down like meteorites.
One by one, they slammed into the terrain, crushing soldiers below and cracking the scorched ground further.
The shockwave hit the rest of Liam's army hard.
The soldiers closest to the blast were flung backwards, tumbling like loose cloth, limbs flailing.
Only a few managed to hold their ground, barely.
Dust poured over everything. The skyline flickered.
Liam didn't even flinch. He watched the collapse in silence, the sharp wind tugging at his cloak.
Then, he smiled faintly and exhaled through his nose.
"Well," he muttered, eyes narrowing, "looks like a hundred thousand won't cut it."