Jackal Among Snakes

Chapter 693: Horrors of a Foe Given Hope

The bolt of blood magic shot forth with enough speed that all onlookers saw was what had been left in its wake. Its tightly compressed power leaked out in jagged black-red sparks that tainted the land, leaving a tremendous field of coursing maroon power in the line it had travelled. An entire forest had become ash in half a second, and the hue marking the land only barely began to fade.

Argrave stared ahead with steady eyes, recovering from the tremendous burden that spell had put on him. Then, a voice cut across the scar he’d carved in the world.

“The favorite of your rudimentary gambits,” the voice said—a deep, rumbling voice that made one’s ears throb, one’s chest ache. “A cheap trick in your hands, but a suitable weapon in mine.”

Argrave’s bolt of blood thrust out of the crimson vortex, clenched firmly as a spear by a gargantuan hand of the same roiling black sludge he’d been fighting minutes ago. It stabbed directly at him, but Argrave met it without even closing his eyes. Claimed by Gerechtigkeit as his own weapon, the spell seemed liable to deliver its explosive power upon Argrave and all the forces at his back.

Before it could, it tilted upward and burst in a curving line with a destination in the sky. All of the clouds in sight vanished, dispelled by the sheer force of its ascent. That spell was Argrave’s, and it responded to his will as ably as any of his [Electric Eels]. It vanished like a rocket sent to space, but Argrave could firmly feel it connected to his being. He could feel its slow turn, adrift in space… and before long, he could feel its point aimed firmly at his target once more. It descended with the selfsame force it had left this planet.

The arrow of blood split the sky, burning the atmosphere, breaking the sound barrier. Thousands of sludge-like black hands rose into the sky on thin appendages, grasping at the bolt as it fell. Once it reached the heart of Gerechtigkeit’s essence, Argrave unbound the spell. Its power, tightly packed, exploded outward in a blooming spiral. The surge of vitality finally returning to Argrave was evidence that his attack had landed successfully.

Moments later, evidence reached all of them. The earth beneath shifted, the air around attempted to escape from the force, and the world itself reeled from the destructive impact of that single spell. As a wave of undeniable power slammed into Argrave hard enough to send him tumbling backward, he expected they’d feel the impact all the way in the Great Chu.

The one feeling it the most would be Gerechtigkeit.

When the dust cleared, the first thing that Argrave saw was a huge shell attached to an arm like a shield, facing the sky. The shell had been pierced through, and in the writhing mass of body parts that squirmed like a colony of worms in a panic, Argrave could see the lingering effects of his blood magic still eating away at the coalescing form of Gerechtigkeit. At this time, the calamity was at its most mutable, yet also at its most fragile. It was the perfect time to press the attack, breaking past this blockade Jaray had engineered.

found him first, crouching beside him. “We’re going,” she said. He could barely hear her over his ringing

keeping their hands open. Anneliese kept Sophia sitting right in front of her atop the same

he’d been using on the embryotic tissue. Gerechtigkeit’s consciousness was present, now, and that meant he could act freely… but his flesh wouldn’t be much firmer than liquid for a few

mad charge to break into Blackgard was emboldened further yet. From Gerechtigkeit’s writhing, transformative mass, a black crab’s claw rose to catch the golden sword. Raccomen seemed to appear from empty space, creating a shroud-like portal that enveloped the claw, transferring it through

hounds made it near the ruins of Jast. The once-proud city of magic had been reduced to nothing more than history. None of its towers still stood, and

valley leading to Blackgard is plugged by foes,” Anneliese shouted to Argrave, even as his spell continued to grow in power. “Even if we can lift the siege of the undead and those golems, we don’t want to be funneled into the valley. We can’t fly over the mountains, either—between the golems and the active defense arrays,

Stolen story; please report.

to speak, but he shouted

hug the coast, then use the ocean to reach the port,” Anneliese declared. “These hounds can traverse anything—open sky, or turbulent ocean. It should be

[Bloodfeud Bow] would be used best, yet as he watched, Gerechtigkeit lashed out with a scorpion’s stinger at the god of justice. Raccomen redirected the attack into Law’s swinging golden blade, yet even as he cleaved the stinger in two the separated bits wrapped around his golden blade and shattered

Law tore into him, it appeared only as though his golden form was being sullied by the corruption of the calamity. Eventually, a hard

Gerechtigkeit asked. “Must I make my

the sky. He soon trained it to strike from above as it had before. Though less than half as powerful, his spell still made its mark in this world as it lit up the sky. Both vanguard gods, seeing the coming airstrike, disengaged. As Raccomen attempted to phase away, one of the eye-golems erupted out of his own spatial portal—Argrave didn’t know when, but it must’ve discovered and entered the other side. It seized Raccomen, and before either deity could react, a colossal praying mantis

to bypass Gerechtigkeit and near the mountains surrounding Blackgard. To Argrave’s right he could see barely

behind them, arms crawling on the ground, legs sprinting full-throttle, and disgusting wings beating all at the same time to produce a horrifyingly face chase. It was only the effort of the full brunt of their forces they’d gathered that kept the

right,”

hills in front of them. These warriors were a twin to the silver knight that had assaulted Blackgard. Each of them drew

than powerful