The legion of solar blades roared, pursuing the fleeing monsters with indiscriminate ferocity. While their raw kinetic impact did not rival that of the Blaszdiscus, their area of efficacy was unparalleled—particularly against the leathery host of the Devilbats, whom they hunted with a predatory efficiency far exceeding Seraph's manual reach.
The Devilbats, despite their fragility, possessed a natural dominance in the high reaches, their membranous wings granting them fluid speed in the open sky.
Unlike the young magis, who was forced to sustain multiple reinforcement liturgies merely to glide through the ether, he could not yet match their instinctive aerial grace.
Yet, within mere seconds, the Gustblasz hammered into the winged swarm, eviscerating over several hundred of their number. The demon beasts struck mid-flight plummeted toward the earth in a terminal dive, their wings buckled and charred by the heat. Scores of carcasses rained from the heavens like a downpour of incandescent cinders.
The bat-kin were no paragons of resilience; the sustained pressure of the liturgy had already halved their ranks.
[SKREEE-SKREEE-FLAP-FLAP!]
The remaining three hundred Devilbats began to wheel in a state of visible agitation and panic. It took but a heartbeat for the first coward to break formation, fleeing beyond the fortress walls in a desperate bid for survival. Following its lead, the remnants of the aerial host scattered to the winds, their collective cohesion shattered beyond repair.
The firmament above the fortress gradually surrendered its leathery shroud, revealing the stark, silver crescent of the moon once more. A pale, lunar radiance descended to touch the flagstones of Ragguard—a shift that offered the sentry forces and demon hunters a fleeting, visceral reprieve. At long last, they felt the suffocating grip of the demonic blockade begin to wither.
The Blaszdiscus attempted to pursue the scattered Devilbats into the distance, yet Seraph had no desire to let his Art stray beyond the threshold of his control. He commanded the igneous chakram to return and resume the liquidation of the remaining Crawlers, a mandate the spell obeyed with a sentient, humming compliance.
Approximately two hundred Crawlers remained, their low snarls now vibrating with a discernible tremor of hesitation. They held their ground but offered no further lunges; instead, each demon beast began a slow, steady retreat, desperate to mask the burgeoning terror reflected in their eyes from the adversary suspended above.
Framed against the lunar orb, the silhouette of the young man was cast in stark relief—a phantom of onyx shadow with heterochromatic eyes that blazed with incandescent light. To the retreating horde, he appeared as the absolute executioner of their race.
"You're thinking of running now? Just as the dawn arrives?" Seraph's voice cut through the cold. "You were allowed in... but you've forfeited the right to leave!—"
"Flamus Piercingspear—Ardeo!!!" Seraph funnelled his mageia to its ultimate peak to intone the final liturgy.
[HUMMMMMMMMM—VIBE...]
Over a hundred igneous lances manifested around the young magis like a vast, burning plumage of fire. The cyclonic gales above began to dissipate, their elemental particles drawn into a singular, rotating maelstrom that fed directly into the young man's frame.
[WHOOOOOOOOOM—!]
The solar spears multiplied, their brilliance intensifying with every passing heartbeat. A radiant thermal aura swept outward until the very stones of the fortress turned a dull, glowing crimson, igniting upon contact. This atmospheric distortion warped the sky and refracted the moonlight, birthing a preternatural mirage that shimmered through the heat.
The silhouette of the young magis seemed to expand ten-fold, his wings of fire casting a monstrous shadow that blanketed the entirety of Ragguard. Yet the city was far from darkened; the igneous reflection was so potent it bathed the streets in a blinding, solar gold.
The mirage manifested by the young magis ignited the fortress with a solar brilliance that eclipsed the zenith of a summer noon. In that singular pulse, every shadow was purged from the masonry, leaving only a majestic, atmospheric pressure that caused the entire city to shudder.
The Crawler horde had committed to a frantic retreat the moment the young man ascended. They galloped with desperate intensity, expending every drop of their demonic vitality to outrun the encroaching doom. Their instincts shrieked with every passing heartbeat; the mageia signature swelling above them felt like the shadow of a primordial monster, goading them to leap toward the curtain walls in a final, lung-bursting sprint.
"PERISH!!!!" The liturgy erupted, a resonant peal that functioned as a death knell for the abyss.
Two hundred igneous lances vaulted into the firmament, surging upward into the cloud bank rather than descending upon the quarry. The enchanted armaments vanished into the leaden shroud as if the young magis had suffered a catastrophic lapse in aim.
Tens of thousands of demon hunters and sentry forces upon the ramparts craned their necks toward the heavens in profound bewilderment. Having monitored the internal slaughter with bated breath, they were left stupefied as the terrifying display of power seemingly dissipated into the ether, momentarily forgetting their mandate to defend the fortress.
Both Robin and General Leonis had been orchestrating the defence of the outer walls, yet their eyes had frequently strayed back toward the main square with a gnawing anxiety.
However, as they bore witness to the scale of the carnage, their concern was supplanted by a visceral dread. They had acknowledged from the outset that Seraph's High Affinity was beyond the human threshold, yet they had never fathomed that a single young man could enact a systematic massacre of both the Crawler and Devilbat legions.
They realised with a sudden, clinical clarity that any attempt to intervene in such a theatre of war would have served only to encumber him.
They simply could not fathom the intent behind this final, divergent strike.
The Crawler horde, numbering over two hundred, spared not a single glance for the munitions that had vanished into the cloud bank. They galloped with desperate necessity, successfully infiltrating the vanguard of the million-strong undead legion in a frantic bid to reach the sanctuary of the rear lines.
Once they had submerged themselves within the undulating sea of a million undead, they presumed themselves safe from peril. Yet, their terror drove them further, until they had nearly breached the hinterlands where the Bigfoots stood as monolithic sentinels.
[VIB-VIB-VIB... HUMMM—]
The boulders the Bigfoots prepared to hoist began to shudder, some even levitating a fraction from the earth without apparent cause. The massive demon beasts froze mid-reach, lost in profound bewilderment at this atmospheric anomaly.
Simultaneously, the structures and high towers within Ragguard vibrated with systemic intensity. A localised tremor seized the fortress; the spires did not merely sway with the gale, but buckled as if under the weight of a gargantuan, invisible hand pressing down upon the entire city.
However, the interior of the fortress sustained the least of the impact.
It was the theatre of war beyond the walls and the gathered demon beasts that bore the brunt of the seismic pressure. Tiny pebbles upon the grasslands began to drift upward for no discernible reason, and though they rose but a few millimetres, the effect was absolute. The grass flattened, and even the Bigfoots, overcome by sudden vertigo, were forced to their knees.