Chapter 824 – Destined (Patreon)

The giant opened its hand, revealing dozens of Blues still floating in the same spot, dazed but otherwise unharmed.

The eight Violets that had occupied that space were gone, however.

Not satisfied with so few casualties, the three-eyed construct swiped its enormous limbs through the rest of the flying mages and slaughtered Violets by the dozens, while ignoring every human below that grade.

Machaon wasn’t sure whether to describe Percy’s actions as cruel or merciful. The Red-born and that mutated wasp of his were clearly targeting the strongest members of the alliance with extreme prejudice, though it seemed like they intended to spare whoever was left.

It didn’t matter.

Even if every single other noble survived, Machaon himself was the one person the boy would never forgive.

Gritting his teeth, he launched another flurry of devastating plasma blasts at the giant, not caring about his expenditure. He’d rather die fighting after tearing a few million tons of flesh from the bugs than be peacefully executed with his channels full.

The other patriarchs followed suit – both the Whites and the Violets. The Blues and Greens seemed to hesitate for a moment. Perhaps they realized that they might be left alone if they surrendered, or maybe their lower grades had simply slowed their reaction times. Thankfully, the weaker mages eventually joined the barrage, blasting the monstrous construct from head to toe with spells of every affinity.

The swarm wasn’t completely impervious to damage.

Scores of scorched or pulverized wasps fell off the gargantuan figure’s exterior every single second, burying the unlucky humans who had been standing beneath it in tall, chitinous hills, or sinking into the bubbling, hissing surface of the acidic bog.

But the bugs were dying far more slowly than they had before their transformation. At this rate, more than half of the Red-born’s minions would remain by the time he exterminated his targets.

The swarm had also grown significantly more effective at slaughtering the strongest mages.

The Violets tried to dodge the figure’s enormous limbs, but the wasps just spread around the fleeing mages like dark blankets, cutting off their escape routes and drowning them in an ocean of stingers and mandibles. A Violet could fend off hundreds of Starry Knights and thousands of Starry Soldiers, but what about tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands?

At some point, the nobles seemed to accept that they weren’t going to win.

A few Greens and Blues started fleeing from the Fungal Spire, scattering in every direction and probably betting on the wasps being unable or uninterested in chasing them beyond their special environment and while maintaining their tight formation.

“Come back, you cowards!” Machaon yelled, infusing his willpower into his voice. “This freakish thing is all controlled by a single person! We just have to drill a path to his hiding spot!”

The truth was that Machaon would have fled too, had he been in their shoes. Why fight a losing battle? Or die in somebody else’s war?

The problem was that this was Machaon’s war. Percy would chase him to the ends of Remior, and had proven more than capable of assassinating even someone as strong as him. Machaon and the other Whites had only kept themselves safe by banding together and hiding behind an army of Blues and Violets.

They wouldn’t last long on their own, and the Red-born would eventually grow strong enough to kill them even if they somehow retained enough powerful subordinates after the massacre.

The boy had to die.

Fortunately, Machaon already knew Percy’s weakness. He glanced in the direction of the settlement as a vicious idea took root. It was admittedly not the most original plan, since he’d already used this exact strategy against the Red-born during their previous battle. But it was effective, so who was Machaon to argue with results?

Flying higher, he aimed his right palm at the Alchemists’ Guild and fired a blast of plasma large enough to destroy half the settlement.

Unsurprisingly, a massive lump of wasps split off from the giant’s side to block the attack, causing hundreds of thousands of bugs to die in the resulting explosion. The Red-born would obviously not allow his loved ones to get hurt, and his minions were far more vulnerable outside the protection of their joint domains.

Machaon exchanged a glance with his peers, urging them to copy his actions.

Their hesitation only lasted a moment. Targeting the Alchemists’ Guild was a great crime, but no greater than slaughtering the wasps. Besides, they’d all come here expecting to fight against the alchemists directly, so it was a bit too late for anyone to be having second thoughts.

The Whites and Violets spread out and began shooting spells at the settlement, forcing the bugs to spread out as well and causing the three-eyed giant to shrink rapidly.

Machaon’s permanent grin grew more feral as he realized that his plan was working, though the figure’s unperturbed expression unsettled him. Machaon wasn’t sure how he could tell, but he felt like the mountain-sized giant was staring directly at him, its eyeless gaze far calmer than the previous time he had employed a similar tactic against Percy.

‘I’m assigning too much agency to that thing. It’s just a giant lump of wasps!’ he told himself as he intensified his attacks. ‘I bet that the kid is scared shitless inside it!’

As if in response to Machaon’s thoughts, the figure opened its mouth even wider, causing countless plumes of colourful mana to rush into its body. Purple streams rose from the corrosive mud, causing the putrid bog to rapidly dry up and its surface to sink deeper. Smaller trickles of various colours flowed from the bodies of its human foes, siphoned directly from the external components of their boosting arts. The greatest quantity of ambient mana, however, was flowing into the three-eyed monster from the Fungal Spire.

Dense pillars of colourful motes erupted from the ground, the slopes of the mountain, and the undersides of the colossal mushrooms. They coiled around the shrinking giant like elegant ribbons before ending up inside its cavernous maw.

‘How is he doing that?!’ Machaon asked himself in horror.

Tens of millions or not, the wasps couldn’t possibly exert such a strong influence on ambient mana scattered over such a large area. They wouldn’t be able to do that even with both cores at the same grade and empowered by the Dance, let alone their mismatched affinities and half-baked boosting arts. Examining the giant more closely, Machaon realized that its chest was starting to swell as the bugs shifted along its torso and lit up with different colours, causing countless runes to briefly flicker on its body.

‘A mana-gathering formation?! Is he using the wasps to draw runes?!’

That made no sense. How could Percy possibly control so many creatures with such precision? His performance before producing the three-eyed construct had already been impressive enough. The sheer amount of brainpower that he must have needed to arrange the bugs into such a tight formation was ridiculous, but having the wasps form enchantments with their bodies as well was something that even a mind deity like Athena or Phoebe might struggle to accomplish.

By the time Machaon considered the implications, the swarm was already on the offensive.

Countless smaller mouths opened across the figure’s body, each lighting up with a different colour and firing a spell of a different element into the human army: bolts of lightning thicker than trees, fireballs hot enough to rival some of Machaon’s weaker attacks, raging rivers of water capable of drowning villages, boulders large enough to flatten houses, and arcs of wind sharp enough to cleave hills into plains.

For a couple of seconds, the ensuing explosions were bright and loud enough to blind and deafen even Machaon, a White-cored mage empowered by the Dance.

When his surroundings finally settled into a semblance of normalcy, he noticed that there were almost no Violets left in the army. A few dozen unlucky Blues had also been caught in the blasts, but the swarm had managed to concentrate most of its attacks on the Violets with commendable precision, eliminating hundreds in an instant. Only around eighty Violets had survived, and most had suffered grievous wounds in the process.

All of a sudden, there was almost nobody left to help Machaon harass the settlement. He and his fellow Whites were still alive, as Percy hadn’t even bothered to aim his weaker spells at them, but the combined damage the six of them could deal wouldn’t be enough to eliminate the rest of the wasps in a timely manner. Especially since the bugs and their leader were finally free to focus their attention on the strongest nobles.

As for the Blues? Their spells would struggle to even reach that far, but the biggest issue was that most of them seemed to have lost the will to fight.

“It’s over,” the creatures buzzed in unison, the combined screech of their wingbeats turning into an eerie sentence, high-pitched enough to rupture a weaker human’s eardrums. “Stand down, and I’ll execute your leaders with some dignity. The rest of you will be left alone.”

Machaon sized the construct up. Over sixty percent of the original swarm remained, making the giant an insurmountable opponent. But it was still weaker than it had been a few minutes earlier, so maybe he stood a chance if he could destroy its core fast enough.

He glanced at his peers. He saw fear in their eyes, but also a silent promise that they weren’t going to surrender.

Gathering the last of his strength, Machaon enveloped himself in plasma and dove right at the heart of the three-eyed monster, burning a path through the wasps. Right before he fully sank into the living ocean, he saw five more streaks of light following behind him.

Good.

The odds of one of them managing to kill the boy before they ran out of mana were six times as high.

Ignoring the other patriarchs, Machaon focused on locating his enemy. The wasps’ domains clamped down on him from every direction, making his every move a monumental challenge. The external flow of his boosting art was already beginning to collapse as the barrier of plasma thinned, but he should be able to hold onto his mana for a few seconds longer.

Machaon flew through the swarm blindly, firing random blasts at anything that looked even remotely odd.

“Show yourself, you bastard! Or are you too scared to kill me with your own hands?!” he shouted as the Dance fizzled out and he was left with only Circulation.

Machaon had known how ridiculous his accusation would sound even before the words had left his mouth. Whether he liked it or not, the Red-born had defeated him once before, and would have killed him if Theseus and Morpheus hadn’t jumped to his rescue.

While it was true that Percy was borrowing strength from the wasps, he had cultivated and mastered that power by himself. Everyone had witnessed how much weaker the swarm had been without the Red-born’s active management.

Against all odds, the younger mage decided to humour Machaon’s taunt in the end.

The smaller wasps parted to reveal their Queen, her radiant carapace flooding the dark, organic cavern with a brilliant indigo light. A cloaked figure stood atop her head, a pair of glowing orange eyes looking at Machaon with pity and condescension from within the shadow of his hood. They matched the colour of the faint aura surrounding him.

Machaon had no idea what that was about. The aura seemed to be made of Green mana like the grey flames shooting in and out of Percy’s skin, though Machaon didn’t recognize the affinity.

Five lifeless bodies were stacked right next to the Red-born. Four of the corpses had their eyes closed or facing other directions, but Theseus’ glassy eyes were coincidentally staring right at Machaon, his final expression betraying his fright.

‘I can do it. There’s a chance!’ Machaon thought, unperturbed by the deaths of his associates. ‘Something about him is clearly different, but the crow isn’t here, and it looks like whatever he’s doing with the wasp hasn’t increased his personal strength in the same way!’

Percy leapt off the Queen’s carapace and floated before the patriarch, inviting him to attack. Knowing that this was an opportunity he couldn’t pass up, Machaon rushed at his opponent, encasing his fists in plasma and trying to melt that self-righteous expression off the Red-born’s face.

But his blows didn’t connect.

No matter how he attacked, Machaon couldn’t catch his opponent. The boy dodged his every move before Machaon even initiated it. Percy wasn’t any faster than he had been during their previous battle, but it felt like his ability to predict the future had improved by an unimaginable margin. Whenever Machaon even considered attacking, the strange orange glow surrounding the Red-born’s body flared up slightly, after which the spells and physical strikes always missed.

The best Machaon could do was to expel blasts of plasma from his fists, venting his frustration on the wasps surrounding them. Without the full power of his boosting art, however, his external attacks dealt minimal damage at the very heart of the swarm.

The closest he got to landing a hit was a punch that passed right next to Percy’s face. It was obvious that the boy had allowed him to get that close, using the rush of wind that followed the attack to pull his hood back.

That was when Machaon saw it: the orange glow was more intense on the boy’s forehead than the rest of his body. Percy’s face slightly resembled the giant figure’s three-eyed gaze, except for the different hue.

Machaon had never seen a mana core located in that particular body part, nor witnessed this specific variant of mind mana, but he still recognized the dense pathways coursing along the boy’s nervous system. He finally understood how Percy had managed to control the wasps with such proficiency and how he could compete against him even without the help of the crow.

“A third mana core… And even a blessing to go with it…” Machaon muttered in disbelief, unsure whether to laugh or cry.

The Red-born had grown even stronger since the last time they’d fought.

He always did.

And it was clear that he always would.

“I… never stood a chance, did I?” Machaon asked, his voice bitter. “This was over as soon as I lost our previous battle… No, from the moment you awakened that damn bloodline of yours, Remior was destined to fall into your hands.”

Percy didn’t bother responding. A grey scythe appeared in his grip, seemingly from nowhere, and the very next moment, Machaon felt its cold blade cleave his body and soul in half.