Laurence glanced to his left and saw Jim focussing, his diadem already materialised and in place upon his forehead. Jim had foregone his usual get up and instead wore a set of solid leather armour over breeches and a simple shirt. His purple jacket was nowhere to be seen, but Laurence knew that he would have it somewhere. Jim went everywhere with that jacket. To Laurence’s right, Cleo and Winoa sat in their armour, heads together conversing about something just out of earshot of Laurence. He smiled, they had missed each other even though they had only been apart for a few days. At twenty seconds from five-thousand he turned back towards the valley. It was time to focus on something other than Cleo.
“Troop ready,” said Algar. “Forward and engage!” He dropped his fist, pointing into the valley, before diving down ahead of the pack. Like a carpet of ants or a brook breaking into new ground, the hundred Heaven rankers followed behind Algar and towards the Lupe camp. Algar’s ploy had worked, the Lupe were entirely distracted by the way the timer was dissolving into the platform. They were in rapture over it, unable to turn their eyes away. Even the Lupe on guard could only notice the hundred man strong army too late to save their own lives as Algar arrived at the head of the spear strike. He punctured through the throat of the nearest guardsman with a shortsword before moving into the camp, not even stopping to flick the blood off his weapon. Every single Lupe that walked within range of Algar was cut down instantly, it was like he was cutting wheat as he sprinted through the camps of the Saints.
The rest of the troop followed behind him, with Laurence quickly cleaning up anything that Algar missed. Hammer swing after hammer swing, step after step, they quickly approached the middle of the valley. The hundred man strong troop struck into the back of the Lupe mass like a hammer against a melon at the forty-five-hundred mark. The Lupe that were in the way were crushed, their bodies cut, torn or ripped apart, the masses of flesh and blood spreading freely over the crowd. Screams spring from the mouths of the wounded and dying that were trampled under the feet of Laurence and his compatriots, alerting the attention of those on the raised dais.
“My kinsman we are being attacked! Fight for your families! Fight for the Lupe!” Declan raised his fist and threw out a ball of compressed mana straight at the middle of the Zephyr army. Algar jumped into the air in an attempt to block the incoming strike, but was a beat too slow. The ball passed him by and slammed into the middle of the army, immediately pulverising ten of the Heaven rankers caught within its blast radius. Like a drill the ball bored into the ground, splitting Algar’s troop in half. The crazed Lupe leader roared in the sky and smashed his paws into his chest, ushering for Algar to fight him. “Come at me boy! I’ll show you what the insides of a Zephyr Immortal look like!”
The dwarf man screamed in response before charging down at the Declan, smashing his fist into the snout of the beastman. His arm carrying through with the motion to the short sword strapped to his waist. He reversed his flow of movement sending bladelight across the entire dais but most prominently at Declan. The wolfman in return punched out, shattering the light and blocking the blade with his fist alone. Shockwaves spread over the entire valley, knocking down any Lupe Saints that were unfortunate enough to be too near the platform at the moment of the strike. Pulling his fist back declan struck out with his other hand, letting a giant shadow of his fist form ahead of his strike, ripping the air apart in the process of his attack. More Saints fell as the two dueled but strangely enough they were not actually harmed by the excess power behind each strike. The dais and six objects on the platform seemed to be sucking up the excess power behind each strike like it was fuel.
Laurence turned from the fight between two Immortals and began crushing his way through the Lupe hordes. Each strike of his would lead on to the next, crushing limbs, skulls and chest cavities as he walked. Step after step he would reap the life of a member of the Lupe clan, turning their Saintly might into meat paste. He tried to do as much damage as possible to intensify the fray. Once the Lupe attempted to regain some semblance of order things would take a turn for the worst for Laurence’s side.
A blade appeared in front of his face as he completed a strike. It narrowly missed him but bit into the side of the head of one of the Zephyr Heaven rankers. Another weapon hit the man in the throat and his head was sent flying into the fray. Before the two Lupes could even react to the fact that they had managed to kill a Heaven ranker Laurence elbowed the first Lupe in the face, knocking him back. As he fell backwards, Laurence stepped forwards and slammed the base of his hammer in between the eyes of the second Lupe before striking with the base again into the first Lupe’s throat as he fell. Stepping forwards, light began coiling down Laurence’s left arm. He thrust his arm out and a thick rope of light wrapped around one of the Heaven ranked Lupe attempting to rally their troops. He pulled the lupe towards him and thrust his hammer out. Mana spread out of his arm and into his weapon, extending into a blade that immediately sliced through the Lupe’s arm. “SAMAEL!” he yelled as the blade extended even further as the light cut through four Lupe behind the Heaven ranker. The light of Laurence’s attack faded into motes of light but he did not have a moment to breathe. The Heaven ranker was not dead, instead he was just crippled. Laurence saw him pull out a claw from his pocket, swing towards Laurence’s left arm and bounce off his metal shoulder.
“Bad luck,” Laurence growled as he grabbed the Lupe in a headlock, slamming Dannan into the Lupe snout he disconnected Inklight from his enemy’s body. There was a crack and the Lupe’s head lolled backwards. His eyes were vacant and he slumped to the ground dead with a broken neck. He roared at the corpse before flinging it away and glancing around. It was slowly dawning on him that he was completely surrounded by the Lupe and had no idea where his friends, or even the majority of the Zephyr army lay.
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