Eduardo nodded, and leaped into the air, summoning a spectral sword beneath him, before flying off towards Zytal.
***
Rax’s body gleamed with the light of his Dao as he battered the Order mage back and forth, trying to crack through the obdurate bulwark of crystal that surrounded the man. Next to him, Pyotr’s ax blazed a trail through the air, trails of yellow fire surrounding it as he channeled his elemental energy into it. Against all odds, the powerful E Ranker was being held back by a newly ascended beast, and a mere F Ranker.
Zytal’s composure broke at the moment he saw his twin die, and as Andovar’s head hit the ground, a crack spread across the front of Zytal’s armor. The crystal shattered as Rax sent his foreleg straight into the center of the crack, a wave of energy expanding outwards. The momentum of a hundred mountain leveling strikes was condensed down into one. The crystal came apart, the world itself seeming to crack with it as the conceptual power of Order was shattered. For a moment, everything within a hundred feet of Zytal came apart, matter drifting into whorls and loops of chaotic space. Then reality reasserted itself, as Zytal made one last stand.
His face twisted in pure, apoplectic rage, but it was too late for him. With one final, devastating cry, he loosed his energy upon himself. Threads of blue spiraled across his body, and they quickly expanded, turning him into a statue of transparent crystal. Zytal’s mind was gone, but he had left something worse behind.
With a light tinkling noise that belied the devastation it brought, the humanoid golem of pure elemental energy took a step forwards. As its foot touched the ground, a cosmic gong sounded, and everything within a thousand feet turned to crystal. The air itself fused together, locking every fighter nearby into a massive gemstone.
Rax and the strongest fighters of the faction quickly broke free, but hundreds of soldiers were trapped into the grip of pure Order. A moment later, a pulse rippled through the crystal, a wave of blinding blue light that swept through everyone still trapped there. When the light disappeared, there was nothing left save the crystal. Everyone who had been stuck within it was gone.
Zytal teleported outside of the mountain of conceptually enhanced diamond, and started to beat his crystalline fists against his chest. Waves of conceptual laws spread out in a circle, changing the battlefield to something more in line with his desires. Gravity changed at the speed of thought, flicking fighters to the side, towards the sky and towards the ground at speed that could have crushed an elephant into paste.
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The beat of crystal on crystal grew faster and faster, until the sky above started to warp, the air vanishing as it was replaced with a perfect vacuum. Domes of Dao energy formed around the nearest survivors as they contested the elemental effect, but for many, it was too much. The vacuum grew and grew in strength, until it started to rip apart even F Rankers who were unable to protect themselves.
The elemental avatar’s form started to split apart as it worked the energy keeping it alive into the world around it, until the very fabric of reality came apart, and a portal to a world of pure order appeared. Unlike before, it had an almost magnetic pull to it. The crystal golems that had been summoned earlier were torn from their tenuous thrones of gravitational resistance, their elemental mastery nothing before the call of a realm beyond mortal understanding.
Gales of cosmic truths carried entire buildings up from the nearby city, caring little for things such as weight or size. Almost everyone nearby was unable to resist. With a desperate howl, Rax expanded his aura out, merging it with those of Eduardo, Talnor and Pyotr. The area for half a mile around them was cleansed of the immense suction forces, but there was nothing that could be done for anyone stuck outside.
Zytal’s form detonated like a tiny supernova, and with a thunderous crash, the portal snapped shut, a wave of debris falling from the air as the force propping them up vanished. Corpses fell with it, those lucky enough to escape the portal dying as they were crushed into paste by the falling masonry. Out of the thousands who had taken part in the fight, whether against the E Rank twins or the armies that had come with them, mere dozens had survived. When a war could be determined by a single higher rank warrior, death came easily to most on the battlefield.
In the Tower
Unaware of the trials and tribulations his followers were going through, Sam meditated calmly in one of the rooms of Garnax’s apartment, trying to conceptualize his domain. He knew that he was on the right track, but he was attempting to use a skill that seemed more fitting for a G Ranker as an E Ranker. Party tricks like simple matter transmutation were useless to him, unless he could extend the scale dramatically. Even then, a mountain could be dropped on an E Ranker, and rather than kill them, it would simply part around their bodies, like if a boulder was dropped on a diamond spike.
No, what he needed was something powerful enough to directly affect his foes, or at least, inhibit their strength. His aura was the base design for this, but it lacked a degree of physical impact that he needed. He could probably grind a mortal into dust with his aura alone if he wanted to, but that would be like a cripple finding solace in being able to squash an ant with a single finger.
