Chapter 616: Saved By Blessed Land [Bonus - ]

Chapter 616: Saved By Blessed Land [Bonus Chapter]

From the base of a swirling crimson cloud three hundred yards above, a shadow dropped like a falling meteor.

It was a monstrosity forged from yellowed bone and calcified sinew... a creature spanning forty feet from wingtip to wingtip, possessing the curved ribcage of a feline and the colossal hooked skull of a raptor.

WHOOOOSH!

It had no feathers as its wings were ribbed sheets of translucent rotting skin through which pulsing black veins pumped bile.

Its hollow eye sockets burned with cold corpse-blue fire. This monster was known as a Bone-Gryphon though none of them would be able to know this...

"EVASIVE!" Bakr wailed, hauling the stick back with all his strength, however the motion was useless.

CRASH-CRUNCH!

The massive serrated bone talons of the beast slammed directly into the helicopter’s tail-boom.

The reinforced titanium-alloy structural tubing crumpled like an empty tin can with the high-speed tail rotor violently severing in a blinding shower of sparks and shearing metal.

BZZZZZZT-KABOOM!

The torque instantly threw the helicopter into a violent uncontrolled flat spin.

Inside the cabin, gravity inverted.

Nadia was ripped from her footing with her harness snapping taut with enough force to bruise her sternum while Samir’s heavy camera rig slammed against the bulkhead, his head bouncing off the metal with a sickening wet crack as blood sprayed across the lens.

"MAYDAY! MAYDAY! WE’RE SPINNING OUT! WE’RE GOING IN—" Bakr’s screams dissolved into hysterical breathless prayers as the ground... the burning streets, the shattered limestone avenues, and the charging hordes of monsters, they all rushed upward at one hundred and twenty miles per hour.

The centrifugal force tore the breath from Nadia’s lungs as the sky and the earth blurred into a dizzying kaleidoscope of smoke, fire, and roaring wind.

’I’m going to die,’ She thought. ’I’m dying live on international television.’

Nadia squeezed her eyes shut, waiting for the concussive fiery impact that would pulverize her bones into paste against the concrete.

...Except the impact never came.

WHOOOOOOSH!

The violent sickening rotation abruptly ceased...

The roaring scream of the runaway turbines was swallowed by an impossibly deep soundless vacuum of cool fragrant air which made Nadia blink while her eyelashes were caked with cold sweat.

The helicopter wasn’t shattered across the asphalt... It was sitting perfectly upright instead.

Its landing skids rested upon the cracked flagstones of a wide, sunken public plaza outside the depot of Sector Four.

The engine was smoking with the shattered tail-boom hanging limp, but the cabin was intact.

Beside her, Samir was groaning, holding his bleeding forehead, while the pilot, Bakr, was still white-knuckle gripping the controls with his chest heaving as he screamed incoherently at the instrument panel.

"Bakr... Bakr, stop screaming!" Nadia gasped, her hands shaking frantically as she fumbled with the buckle of her harness. "Stop shouting! We’re on the ground! We’re... we’re alive?!"

"H-Huh?!" Bakr blinked, his voice hitching as he looked out the cockpit canopy. "What... what did we hit?! Did the auto-rotations work?! Where are the flames?!"

"Nadia..." Samir whispered, his voice trembling so hard the words barely left his lips.

He didn’t look at the damaged helicopter, instead he was pointing his trembling blood-stained index finger straight up through the open cargo hatch toward the sky.

"Look... look up..."

Nadia turned her head, stepping out onto the skid, and froze.

Directly above them, doming over the entire four-square-block plaza like an impenetrable glowing mountain of solid crystal was a purple barrier.

It was mesmerizing.

It wasn’t the flat utilitarian gold of Khemet’s solar shields that she was used to... It was a radiant luminous purple, pulsing with a honeycombed design that hummed slowly.

THUD! CRACK! CRUNCH!

Outside the glowing purple dome, dozens of beasts... hulking six-legged trench-drakes, swarms of razor-winged carrion bats, and necrotic ghouls were hurling themselves against the crystalline hexagons with suicidal fury.

Yet, the moment their claws, their teeth, or their bile touched the purple surface, they didn’t even leave a scratch!

The barrier simply reflected the kinetic output straight back into their bodies, turning their bones to powder and sending their mangled carcasses tumbling backward into the dust.

...And hovering thirty feet in the air, right at the apex of the honeycombed dome, stood the architect of their salvation.

Nadia’s breath died in her throat.

It was an elf.

She was breathtakingly regal, suspended weightlessly against the smoky sky as if gravity were merely a polite suggestion she chose to ignore.

Her hair was a cascading river of spun pale gold, falling past her waist, shimmering with iridescent motes of starlight.

Her skin was porcelain and unblemished by the falling ash, and her eyes...

They were a deep gold-silver light that was actively bleeding out from the pupil, carrying a terrifying luminescence that seemed to hold the silent uncaring infinity of a thousand distant nebulae.

"Huh...?"

She was draped in pristine form-fitting armor, its pauldrons and vambraces etched with intricate runes that subtly shifted and rotated across the metal plates in real-time.

The elven woman looked down through the glowing purple dome with her gaze sweeping over the terrified news crew and the hundreds of battered bleeding civilians huddled in the sunken plaza below.

"Calm yourselves, everyone," the elf spoke.

Her voice wasn’t loud at all yet it resonated within the marrow of their bones, carrying an effortless authority that immediately cut through the hysterical weeping of the crowd.

This woman was strong...

"I have been made aware by the locals that the heavy access hatches situated at the center of this place lead into the civil protection bunkers," she said, her slender armored hand gesturing gracefully toward the massive blast-rated iron doors embedded in the plaza floor. "You will proceed down those stairs in an orderly fashion immediately... Do not stampede and do not leave your wounded behind."

Nadia scrambled down from the skid, her journalistic instincts firing through the fog of her adrenaline.

She looked around the plaza.

...It was true.

Dozens of people... families carrying crying children, wounded office workers, and bruised guards were actively materializing into the plaza in brief soft flashes of violet light, plucked from collapsing buildings across the sector and deposited safely onto the stone flags.

Guiding them toward the bunker doors were seven local Awakened Lords... men and women whose ornate silks were torn, their mana cores flickering with dangerous instability and their faces hollow with shock.

They looked battered yet they were frantically ushering the citizens downward into the concrete depths.

Nadia stepped closer to the edge of the barrier, squinting up at the glowing breastplate of the floating archon.

There was a crest that she knew all too well.

"Huh...?"

Nadia gasped, the microphone nearly slipping from her numb fingers.

"That crest..." she stammered, her voice carrying through the syndicate’s international feed, broadcasting to two hundred million terrified viewers across the globe. "You... you’re from Blessed Land?! The domain of Lord Vespera?!"

Up in the air, the cold distant archon expression on the elf’s face subtly cracked.

Aeliana looked down at the disheveled woman holding the microphone with her lips parting into a small remarkably soft breathtakingly radiant smile that completely dispelled the terrifying chill of her presence.

"Indeed," Aeliana replied, her chin lifting with quiet pride. "I am Aeliana, the Astrea Archon of the Stars... I serve as a sworn commander under the banner of Lord Vespera."

She paused, looking across the burning avenues beyond the barrier.

"Make haste into the earth, citizens... I have locked down six shelter access nodes across this quadrant, anchoring spatial stability fields over each opening... As far as my sensory webs can reach, the civilians in this sector will not be touched by the monsters."

"B-But there are too many!" Nadia shouted back, gesturing frantically toward the sky where dozens more black fissures were violently tearing open, disgorging an endless tide of horrors. "The entire northern sky is falling... There are thousands of them, tens of thousands even! You can’t hold this entire sector alone!"

Aeliana’s smile didn’t fade.

If anything, the glow ringing her irises sharpened, brightening with an amused light.

"Alone?" Aeliana chuckled, the sound like silver bells echoing across the ruins. "You misunderstand... I am not alone... My sisters are with me as well. Blessed Land will protect all of you!"

’Did that sound cool...?’ Aeli thought with a bright blush painting her inner thoughts, she was trying as hard as possible to do so.

SCREEEEECH!

Above the honeycombed dome, the sky violently darkened.

A swarm of over fifty Bone-Gryphons, accompanied by hundreds of razor-winged shadow-crows, converged upon Aeliana’s position, drawn by the blinding luminescence of her power.

WHOOSH! WHOOSH! WHOOSH!

They dove in a tight funnel of snapping jaws and barbed bone talons, descending upon the floating elf with enough collective weight to probably level a mountain fortress, however Aeliana didn’t retreat beneath her barrier.

"Hmph."

She simply turned her body to face the incoming swarm of fifty abominations, her golden eyebrows rising in lazy amusement.

’Good,’ she thought, her lips curving into a confident grin. ’Gather close. It makes the challenge so much cleaner.’

CRRRRRRK!

Aeliana raised her left arm with her fingers curling as if gripping an invisible bow!

From the open air, condensation of pure violent purple starlight bled into reality...

In the span of a single second, a magnificent recurved composite greatbow that was forged from translucent cosmic mana materialized in her grip.

Her right hand reached back, drawing an invisible string.

BZZZZZZZZZT-SHRRRRRK!

An arrow formed on the rest and it wasn’t simply a physical projectile... Aeliana needed to show off after all.

’Heh.’

It was a spinning five-foot lance of compressed purple spatial plasma and the energy was spinning so fast that it weaved an inverted gravity well around the arrowhead that caused the atmospheric moisture in the air to instantly freeze into microscopic violet diamonds.

The concussive pressure of the drawn string caused the air around Aeliana to bend, casting rippling distortions across the clouds.

"I hope you’re ready..."

PING!

She released.

KABOOOOOOOOOOOM!

The displacement was so violent that a concussive shockwave exploded outward from Aeliana’s shoulders, ripping through the sky with the roar of a cannon.

Even through the thick, honeycombed purple barrier protecting the plaza below, the blast wave rattled Nadia’s teeth, sending the reporter’s hair thrashing frantically around her face as Samir fought to keep the camera steady.

The purple arrow tore across the sky, leaving a blinding violet trench through the crimson clouds!

SPLAT-CRUNCH!

It slammed directly into the breastbone of the lead Bone-Gryphon!

BOOOOOOM!

The compressed arrow discharged an expansive, blinding shockwave that illuminated three square miles of the city in high-intensity purple radiance.

The lead gryphon, along with eight of the beasts flanking it, was instantly vaporized into drifting white bone-dust.

Beneath her, three of the Bone-Gryphons had survived the outer edge of the blast with their charred wings smoking as they wheeled back for a second pass, shrieking a corrupted wet cry that vibrated the fillings in a mortal jaw from a mile away.

Aeliana didn’t bother drawing again as she simply closed her fist.

CRUNCH-CRUNCH-CRUNCH!

The compressed gravity still lingering from the first detonation folded all three inward at once, crumpling wing, bone, and shrieking beak into a single fist-sized ball of white ash before it had time to fall.

Yet, the remaining forty abominations didn’t halt... Driven by primal frenzy, they surged through the smoke, screeching as their claws reached for Aeliana’s throat.

’The battle was over when I released my attack...’

She stood in mid-air, lowering the bow with her lips curving into an arrogant smirk.

"Collapse," she whispered.

HUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

In the exact point where the first arrow had detonated in the sky... reality violently inverted.

’Huh?’ Nadia thought as a strange spatial phenomenon erupted.

A microscopic pitch-black singularity manifested at the epicenter of the purple smoke.

WHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSH!

An irresistible gravitational vacuum roared to life immediately as the forty charging Bone-Gryphons, their shrieking wings beating frantically against the air, found themselves powerless against the spatial pull.

"Come on... die for me!"

Their momentum violently reversed and with sickening unnatural velocity, all forty massive beasts... along with hundreds of falling building fragments and stray shadow-crows were dragged backward through the sky, sucked uncontrollably toward that single microscopic point in space.

’Spatial...’

They collided in mid-air with the horrific wet crunch of snapping bones, twisting into a massive tangled helpless ball of thrashing limbs and shrieking maws.

And then... the singularity reached critical mass.

’Distortion.’

FLASH! KABOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!

A second spatial detonation tore through the upper atmosphere as the tangled ball of forty apex monsters was completely obliterated in a blinding supernova of purple spatial fire.

The secondary shockwave rolled across the northern sector, smashing through the upper stories of six abandoned corporate high-rises, shearing the concrete towers in two and throwing millions of tons of shattered glass and pulverized masonry into the empty sky...

Beneath the barrier, the hundreds of civilians stood in dead paralyzed silence.

"Wha– what strength..."

Nadia Khoury stared up at the empty sky where forty high-tier monsters had flown bare heartbeats ago.

Not a single feather remained and not a single scrap of bone fell to the earth either.

There was only the quiet gentle drift of purple starlight motes that settled over the city like falling snow.

Aeliana slowly turned her head, looking back down toward the open-mouthed reporter.

"You are safe," Aeliana said calmly. "Get beneath the stone."

Nadia scrambled forward, practically lunging against the outer perimeter of the purple ward, desperately thrusting the microphone toward the sky.

"Lord Archon! Please! Wait!" Nadia shouted, her voice trembling with professional desperation. "Who authorized this intervention?! The World Council has not issued an emergency mandate! Is Lord Vespera deploying her army without any clearance?! What is—"

WHOOSH!

Aeliana didn’t answer.

With a single effortless flick of her armored ankles, Aeliana shot straight up into the air like a rising star with speed that sent a circular ring of white vapor expanding across the clouds.

As she climbed through the freezing skies, sheets of fine crystalline frost began to creep out from the pores of her slender hands, coating her vambraces in sharp translucent rime.

Her eyes scanned the chaotic burning horizon, and beneath the calm dignity of an elf, a sudden deep crimson blush bloomed across the tips of her pointed ears.

’Ten minutes...’ Aeliana thought, her heart hammering against her ribs with an intensity that had nothing to do with the monsters circling in the clouds.

’It has only been ten minutes since our Lord tore open the world and summoned the ten of us into this realm! So this is Earth, huh? Unfortunately the Internet is down... I wanted to see their smut novels.’