Chapter 3275 Sacrifice for Power (Part 2)
?Chapter 3275 Sacrifice for Power (Part 2)
Jirni raised her visor to flash a soft smile at the Puppet's bark. "This is going to screw with your focus while this is going to make it last longer."
She placed her armored palm on the main body of the Puppet and sent waves of vitality into it.
"What are you doing?" The Yggdrasill's voice had lost its arrogance.
Using Invigoration on the sprout energized its wood but did nothing to sate its hunger. It only made its perceptions more vibrant, including the progressive withering from starvation.
The worst part was that with all those nutrients right below the sprout, one sip would be enough to stop the hunger.
One sip and the game would start anew.
"Making sure there's no peaceful slipping into oblivion." Jirni replied.
"You are a monster!" Aalejah and the Yggdrasill said in unison.
"Thanks, dear." She giggled like a little girl. "Since you know so many things and we are stuck together for a while, why don't you start telling me something I don't know?"
***
Inside the Yggdrasill's Fringe, at the same time as Ra'ntar turned into a Puppet.
Free from the pain of Jirni's torture, the World Tree found their focus again and bet everything they had to fortify their position before something else happened.
"That crazy Ernas woman and Ripha Menadion forced my hand. I need to win and to do it quickly!' The Yggdrasill thought as all of their Chroniclers turned into Wooden Puppets. It boosted their link with the Wood Golems, made them immune to fear, pain, and tiredness. Now, even if one of the white cores found the elf hidden inside a Golem or if the Divine Beasts destroyed one with a Silverwing's Annihilation, the elf wouldn't die. As long as one splinter of a Puppet remained, the World Tree could regenerate them. The Fringe was full of fertile ground the Golems could draw upon to endlessly restore their pilot.
The Chroniclers had gained the regenerative abilities of the Fae at the price of their free will and, in time, their life.
'Regaining the trust of the elves after assimilating so many of them will take a long time but I'll worry about that later. They are greedy creatures and as long as I offer them enough compensation, they'll overlook my transgression. What matters now is to win!' The Yggdrasill had turned the Chroniclers into Wooden Puppets and Awakened the elves in order to override their weak minds and made them focus on the battle.
The Librarians and the rest of the elves not only had their strength and magical prowess boosted from the bright blue to the deep violet, but they were also uncaring of their burning villages. The Yggdrasill's roots that kept their bodies from blowing apart also hijacked their senses.
Now even normal elves followed the will of the World Tree like cogs in a machine that took any form the Yggdrasill wanted. They wouldn't even hesitate to throw their lives away if so their master desired.
As for the Wood Golems, they didn't need to connect to form anti-Guardian spells anymore. Baba Yaga, Silverwing, and Dawn kept blowing Golems apart just to see them rebuild themselves in a matter of seconds.
The Yggdrasill's roots and world energy of the Fringe fueled them endlessly, making even the deadliest of wounds just a temporary distraction.
Yet that wasn't the worst.
The elves were the Yggdrasill's army but the arrays were their weapons. They had been improved over the centuries and held an untold amount of power.
After dismantling the magical formations, the thousands of runes scattered all over the Fringe had converged over the small area of the fight and were rearranging themselves into Tower Tier spells.
The ground exploded with hurricanes of magma, toxic rain fell from above, and frost rays shot down the Wyrms from the sky.
"What the fuck is happening?" Valtak said.
The growing storm blotted out the sun and the freezing winds were so violent that they could topple even the Elder Wyrm.
"The arrays!" Gentor tried his best to shield the Father of Fire, but not even Golden Radiance could protect him from the cold stiffening his muscles. "The World Tree has sacrificed the entire array network.
"They have given up on the home advantage in exchange for explosive offensive power!" Cold was the bane of Dragons and the massive storm conjured by the sacrifice of so many water arrays at the same time held the power of an ice age. The Wyrms comprised the majority of Lith's army and as the temperature dropped their inner fire dimmed. "Don't worry, Grandfather. This just means it's our time to shine!" Xenagrosh made good use of Valtak's lessons and tapped into her troll's core endless vitality to produce a barrier of Immortal Flames to protect the two Patriarchs from the cold wave.
Her roar also served as a battle cry, calling all the monster-Eldritches hybrids to her side. Without the arrays suppressing the offensive means of those lacking Spirit Magic, the members of the Organization could manifest their full might.
Bytra assumed her Raiju form and ran in circles around the Yggdrasill, becoming faster
with every lap and wresting control of the storm with her lightning. Theseus the Meneos-Bastet pummelled at the Wood Golems three at a time.
He regenerated as fast as them, hit much harder than them, and his Mana Body bloodline ability made him impervious to both physical and magical attacks. He crushed one Golem with each hand and breathed violet blasts of Origin Flames on another. "Cold does shit to me whereas you still burn like kindle!" Yggdrasill wood was much harder than the Bastet's flesh but it was also vulnerable to his Abomination touch. Whenever Theseus felled a Golem, he sprouted countless tendrils from his body that fed upon the fragments until the last remnants of the Puppet piloting the construct were gone, killing it for good.
On top of that, Origin Flames canceled darkness fusion so each one of his victims sent pangs of agony through the Tree's hive mind.
Nandi the Minotaur was too small to fight the Golems and had no reason to. The army of elves was a problem and he was the solution.
"A stingy master is a recipe for failure." A mere wave of his hands deactivated all pieces of the elves' equipment without a power core. "You should have demanded the good stuff,
like I did!"
The modern version of his pata crafted by Bytra mowed the elven ranks down like ripe wheat, their armor and weapons neutralized and offering no protection against the Chaos-infused blades.
Dodging his attacks with dimensional magic was impossible as well. The bio-crystals on his body drained the earth element, creating an imbalance in the world energy that
made it impossible to Blink.
"Now!" Cyare and Hushar timed their Doom Tides so as to shield their allies from the brunt of the storm and drain the world energy long enough to buy the Dragons a few
seconds of respite.
The two Divine Beasts-Eldritch hybrid spread their Mana Aura to as many of their allies as they could, allowing them to survive the onslaught from the sky.
Without the darkness sealing arrays, their Chaos spells crossed the battlefield unimpeded, offering cover fire to the white cores and forcing the Yggdrasill to defend their main body.