I didn't even get to finish stretching before Veneri moved.
One moment he was standing beside me as the next he was already sprinting down the slope of bone and dust toward the massive Krepsuna that was still trying to pulp Farrynelle into the ground.
"Hey! At least warn people before you go playing executioner!"
He ignored me.
By the time he reached the center of the battlefield, Farrynelle was dodging massive attacks as the Krepsuna's massive arm smashed down where she had been a split second earlier. Xander was already moving in to intercept the next attack.
"Move!"
Both of them froze for half a second when they saw him. I couldn't blame them. The last time they had seen Veneri in person, he wasn't exactly split into different Pentarchs and wandering around a cursed graveyard.
"V–Veneri?"
Xander's reaction was quieter but no less shocked.
"Get out of the way!"
To their credit, they didn't argue. Farrynelle leapt backwards in a streak of lightning, landing beside Xander, who pulled back with her. They both retreated to a safer distance and neither of them was stupid enough to ignore that tone. The Krepsuna, meanwhile, didn't care about reunions or shock. It roared and swung one of its massive arms at Veneri.
He didn't dodge, Instead, he planted his feet on the ground and drew Soul Energy into Calimostria. Sapphire blue energy flowed from Veneri's body into the blade as he activated the Phase Slash enchantment.
"First Plenituse Technique, Viridescence."
The swing that followed was vertical.
That was the simplest way to describe it but it didn't come close to capturing what actually happened. Calimostria moved down in a single vertical slash and for a split second, nothing changed.
Then the world split.
A thin sapphire line sliced its way from the sky to the ground in a perfectly straight and silent manner. It wasn't just the Krepsuna that was cut; the land itself was. The sound came a second later, forming a massive gorge that stretched dozens of kilometers in both directions. Dust, bone fragments and chunks of earth were hurled into the air as the two halves of the battlefield slid apart just enough to make the devastation obvious.
The Krepsuna stood in the center of that line for a heartbeat. Its limbs kelt twitching as if it was trying to process what had just happened. There were no gushing wounds or spilled blood. Instead, its body crumbled into fine gray ash from the inside out, starting at the point where the slash had passed through and spreading rapidly until the entire ten-meter monstrosity disintegrated into drifting particles that were carried away by the stale wind of the Graveyard of Bones.
Its soul had been completely severed.
The other Krepsunas began to panic.
I have never seen Krepsunas panic before. They were supposed to be mindless scavengers driven by instinct and hunger, but whatever minimal intelligence they possessed clearly recognized when something had just erased one of their strongest in a single motion. Their movements became erratic, as they screeched and staggered back from the newly formed gorge.
"Now!"
One of the Therianthrope generals shouted from the base's defensive line.
The morale shift was instant. Where they had been fighting defensively before, they now surged forward with renewed ferocity. Claws, blades, fangs and Divinities clashed against the disorganized Krepsunas and without the towering Scavenger Rank to anchor them, the monsters started dropping one after another.
I joined in too, of course.
It would have been embarrassing to just stand there watching everyone else have fun. Since I can't use Sapphire Materialization when I'm with him, I used his Soul Energy and hand to hand combat to attack. Each time one of them turned into ash.
It didn't take long after that.
One by one, the last of the Krepsunas fell. The stench of decay was slowly replaced by the sharp scent of ozone from Farrynelle's lightning and the cool dampness of Xander's lingering mist. When the final Krepsuna died, a cheer came from the Therianthropes. It started as a few exhausted shouts and quickly spread into a full-blown wave of relieved laughter and people dropping to their knees just to catch their breath.
Three days of relentless pressure had been lifted in a single, overwhelming moment.
Farrynelle and Xander were already moving toward Veneri, both of them still looking slightly stunned as they crossed the broken ground. I followed at a more relaxed pace, brushing ash off my clothes and trying not to grin too obviously at the chaos he had just caused.
"You…" she started, then shook her head, clearly struggling to pick which question to ask first. "Thank you. Seriously. That thing was a nightmare to deal with."
Xander nodded beside her.
"We would have lost more people if you hadn't intervened. Your timing was impeccable."
Veneri rested Calimostria against his shoulder like he hadn't just created a canyon into the landscape.
"You're welcome."
Farrynelle blinked at him, then huffed out a breath that was half laugh, half disbelief.
"Also, how are you even here? Last I heard, you were... well, not exactly available for battlefield rescues."
He hesitated for a fraction of a second, then gave the most Veneri-like answer possible.
"It's a long story."
I couldn't help it. I sighed loudly enough to make all three of them glance at me.
"Understatement of the century. You have no idea how long that story actually is."
I crossed my arms and looked around the battlefield, scanning for any lingering Krepsuna signatures just to be safe. The air was clear. The ground was still settling from the massive gorge he'd created, but there were no more hostile presences.
"All the Krepsunas are dead. The rest are too scared to come back anytime soon, judging by how fast they ran."
Xander let out a low whistle when he faced the canyon that now split the battlefield in two.
"I'm amazed. I knew you were strong, but this is something else."
Farrynelle nodded vigorously beside him.
"We were struggling against that Scavenger Rank for hours. We hit it with everything and even tried to overload its regeneration. And you just ended it."
Veneri shrugged slightly, as if they were discussing something mundane .
"I can cut through souls. Krepsunas regenerate their physical bodies quickly, but their souls don't recover in the same way. Once the soul is severed from the body, there's nothing left for the regeneration to anchor to."
There was a brief silence as that sank in. I watched their expressions shift from confusion to realization, then to a mix of awe and mild frustration.
I snorted softly.
"Yeah, welcome to fighting alongside Veneri. Half the time he makes things look stupidly easy just because he's using a completely different layer of mechanics than everyone else."
Farrynelle shot me a sideways glance. "You sound both proud and annoyed."
"I am both proud and annoyed. It's a very complicated emotional state, thank you very much."
Veneri, of course, ignored that and instead turned his attention toward the base, already scanning for damage and casualties like the walking strategist he was. And just like that, the battlefield victory was over, and the long, complicated story of why he was here at all was waiting to be told.