…The stone giant walked across the dark sea, cutting its surface with his wide chest. The six humans were gathered on the circular platform of his severed neck, pressing themselves against the swaying stone. The cold water was spraying into their faces and the furious winds were threatening to throw them off the moving statue into the deadly waves below.
Nephis had long extinguished her flames, so they were surrounded by absolute darkness. Sunny was the only one who could see what was happening around them, so his role was to serve as the eyes of the cohort.
Lua conjured essence into a claw over her hand and used it to dig herself into the stone, in the process creating an anchor.
"Sunny?!" Effie shouted.
He lingered for a few moments and then yelled. "Prepare yourself! We're going to be underwater for a couple of minutes, at least!"
'Wonderful.' Lua summoned the sealed helmet of Blood Relic.
"...Now!"
The black water rose higher and higher. The shoulders of the giant were already submerged in its lightless depths. The circular platform was going to be next. As the stone colossus moved across the bottom of the canyon, the platform rose and fell. After another fall, it was finally lost beneath the waves.
The cold, salty water crashed into them and then swallowed the entire world. The members of the cohort desperately held onto the cracks in the stone, trying to prevent themselves from being washed away by the raging current. No one would be able to save them if they were.
Lua pressed the side of her head against the stone, trying to stay attached to the colossus. The helmet of the Blood Relic partly held its seal. 'God I hate this place.' Lua cursed the gods as the cursed sea slammed into her body, crushing her against the stone.
All of a sudden her body was suddenly slammed into the platform with tremendous force. 'What the hell!?' The stone giant was climbing out of the canyon. His massive hands grabbed onto the edge of it, and with one devastating pull, the colossus threw himself upward. A few moments of this torture, and they were above water once again.
Lua gasped for air, tearing off her half flooded helmet she dismissed it. Lua crawled to the edge of the platform, the cursed sea was barely up to its abdomen now. She watched intrigued as Sunny climbed away, moving to take care of a stowaway.
Sunny disappeared for a while before eventually popping over the side and sprawling himself out on the stone. "Sunny? Are you alright?" Kai asked.
"...I'm alive."
A short while later, Nephis called out to him. "What were you fighting?"
Sunny grimaced. "A big ugly worm. I threw him back into the water."
"Did you kill it?" Lua interjected.
"No," Sunny answered. "It's gone now, so rest up. I'll keep watch."
***
Day broke a few hours later, Lua looked upon the sleeping form of Sunny. During the morning Nephis cooked up an absolutely amazing meal, after which they erected defences.
Plates of iron stripped of the abominable spiders and stored in Effie's bag were inserted around its perimeter, with the golden rope strung between them as an improvised railing. More of these plates were shaped into makeshift rods and placed in the center to serve as throwing spears in case the cohort was attacked from the air.
Lua stood at the front of the statue, her pristine white cloak billowing in the wind like a brilliant cape. Far below, the landscape of the Labyrinth was slowly moving past them. The stone giant was marching south, indifferently crushing mountains of crimson coral under his feet with each step.
Her gaze idly scanned over the landscape. Caster was next to her, overviewing the map and marking off points of interest.
She idly looked over their journey, it was so… 'Boring.' there was nothing except the red coral and the occasional skeleton. Suddenly Cassie turned south and frowned. Her quick movement drew everyone's attention. 'Oh oh.'
Nephis turned to the blind girl and frowned. "Cassie? Do you feel something?"
Cassia lingered for a few moments and then said, her voice uncertain. "I think… I think a storm is coming."
A storm meant that the cursed sea would rise from the depths earlier than usual. It also meant that there would be rain and lightning, which would make the behavior of the dwellers of the depths unpredictable. It also meant hurricane winds, and that was really bad news when you were stuck on a moving colossus two hundred meters above the ground.
Nephis gritted her teeth. "You heard her. Prepare…"
However, the blind girl interrupted her. "Wait. There is something else."
Nephis lingered for a moment, then asked. "You are sensing another threat?"
Cassie scowled, then said in a strange tone. "No, not sensing. I just… I can hear something strange. It's like a rustle."
Everyone stared at her for a few seconds, trying to understand the meaning behind her words. Strangely, Kai was the first one to react. Suddenly pale, he spun around and summoned his bow. Before anyone could understand what was happening, something whistled in the air, and a dark shape forcefully crashed into the stone platform, smearing it with blood. A black arrow was protruding from its body.
The creature looked somewhat like a giant locust. Its body was covered in black chitin and comparatively small, no bigger than that of an adult human. Its wide wings were thin and transparent. As it convulsed in death throes, the wings moved, threatening to push the members of the cohort off of the platform. Nephis dashed forward, grabbed the disgusting creature and threw it down.
Kai was already grabbing another arrow. There was an expression of panic on his face.
Lua reacted instantly, summoning eventide and drawing back, aiming upwards before losing an arrow. She knew precisely what creatures these things were.
[You have slain an Awakened Beast, Flesh Reaver.]
[Your soul grows purer]
Lua watched as the locust she shot, dropped from the sky and spattered onto the ground, its body had a gaping hole where her arrow tore through it. The Flesh Reavers had relatively weak physical bodies.
So a bow shot from a fifth tier ascended bow easily obliterated their bodies. As she prepared to knock another arrow, her gilded eyes easily spotted the far off bugs. Kai yelled. "Swarms! These fiends hunt in swarms! Get ready!"
Suddenly, a black dot appeared in the grey clouds and swiftly fell down, covering the distance to the neck of the colossus almost instantly. Before it could attack, though, Effie's spear collided with it. The giant locust practically exploded, sending a rain of blood splattering against the stone back of the colossus.
But by the time the huntress dismissed her spear and before she had the time to summon it again, there was another dot, and another, and another…
Lua knocked more and more light arrows into the growing cloud of dots.
[You have slain….]
Nephis raised her sword and yelled. "Cassie! Wind!"
Flinching, the blind girl began to call upon her wooden staff. While white sparks of light were still weaving the shape of it in her hands, the Quiet Dancer flew out of its scabbard by itself and flashed into the air, piercing an approaching locust clean through.
A few moments later, a powerful gale shot from the wooden staff into the skies, slowing the attacking locusts down and sending them staggering.
Lua ignored it all, firing more and more arrows. Only her and Kai were competent archers within the group, so they took the role of being the anti aircraft guns. Arrow after arrow, both archers fired into the sky.
Corpses rained down around them as the two. 'Wolf' Lua summoned her echo and told it to defend the platform. Kai and Lua went back to back, losing arrows after each other. The situation was worsening moment by moment. More and more reavers are getting closer.
'We can't keep this up.' Lua mentally cursed. She pushed her essence into eventide, augmenting it threefold. Out of the corner of her eyes she watched Wolf turn to mist, slaughtering ten locusts in a mere moment, obliterating the soul shards in the process.
Just a moment after the repulsive bug landed, Neph's sword flashed through the air, slicing it in half. Sending the mangled body off the platform with a powerful kick, She turned to Kai and Lua then yelled. "Don't try to kill them! Break their wings!"
With a sudden light of understanding in his eyes, the archer changed his approach. Lua kept her approach, knowing Eventide would shred through them anyway. Indeed, that made sense. The members of the cohort didn't need to slay the locusts. They just needed to make it so the flying scourges weren't able to reach the stone platform.
Effie, meanwhile, did not need this advice. Everything she hit simply exploded into a disgusting puddle of bloody goo. The problem the huntress faced was that there was no powerful range weapon she could use. Her beautiful spear was not really suited to be thrown that often.
Lua kept launching arrows but she felt something was wrong. Wolf saw it first, hundreds of creatures attempting to climb up the giant's legs. 'Deal with it.' Wolf turned to mist and shot down the giant's body, racing to intercept, Sunny and Nephis dropped down to the shoulders to deal with the rest.
She kept firing arrows as Wolf tore the primates which were attempting to climb up.
[You have slain an awakened monster, Blood Flower.]
[Your soul grows purer]
Countless beasts were climbing up the stone body of the ancient colossus, covering a frightening amount of distance with each second. Sunny, Nephis and Wolf all battled together tearing down dozens of monsters. 'We can't keep going.'
"Caster!" Lua yelled, the man turning his head to her "I'm going to try something, tell everyone to shut their eyes."
Caster's eyes widened then he nodded.
Lua summoned Sky's Gift, wrapped her essence into the spear but instead of augmenting the memory, she pushed it all into making [Forged Lightning] as powerful as possible. She readied Knight's Crest and threw the spear into the dark cloud of locusts.
She pulled on the enchantment. The sky went white.
***
Hundreds of kilometers away Seishan was idly walking through the bright castle when, what appeared to be another sun erupted on the horizon. Seishan winced as she covered her eyes.
Moments later the bright white shifted into a deep raging amethyst. Thousands of bolts of lightning were piercing the sky, fire raining down around. "What the hell!"
***
Slumping and nearly falling off the colossus before Effie scooped up her convulsing body. Lua's head felt like her head was splitting open. She had forcibly drained all three of her cores then immediately refilled them with Knight's Crest then emptied them again. This was all in effort to make [Forged Lightning] as powerful as possible.
The enchantment, augmented by [War Spawn], [Brilliant Will] and all three essence conjurations tore through the space, the ascended enchant forging a literal lightning storm in the sky.
Ordinary a dormant core would contain nearly enough essence to even use an awakened enchantment, but her dormant ability was around the purity of an ascended's in of itself not to mention her incredibly high efficiency from two years worth of practices greatly increased how much she could squeeze out. Meaning she could quite comfortably use enchantments. Although, using six cores worth in a matter of seconds would still cause both damage and essence exhaustion.
Dozens of Reavers were vaporised instantly by the amethyst lightning, the remaining were struck by a few million volts of electricity and were instantly set a light, falling from the sky as mere balls of fire. The balls reigned down around the moving statue.
Lua felt her very soul almost tear apart, using six cores simultaneously was equivalent to suicide. She ignored the cacophony of the spell's whispers. Her mind was unable to even process the sound of the air itself beginning to set alight.
[You have slain….]
[You have slain….]
[You have slain….]
The swarm seemed to real back as [Forged Lightning] finally deactivated, Sky's Gift being dismissed at the same time. Lua's goal was to make the lightning reach as hard as possible. And it worked wonderfully.
She was not ready for what came next.
[Asura has evolved.]
[Flame of Divinity has evolved.]
And finally.
[Your Soul is taking shape.]