Pyotr raised his ax, exerting his elemental might upon the earth around Zytal, sealing him away. He felt his control rapidly diminishing as the E Ranker extended his elemental mastery, but he held it for long enough to let Rax prepare a searing beam of heat. As Zytal broke free of his constraints, rising up into the air, Rax let his attack loose. The beam struck the man in his already cracked crystalline armor, melting it away and blackening his flesh. As a mage, Zytal was hardly the most durable of foes.
He let out a cry of rage, and his crystalline armor returned at double the size, coating him in what was essentially a mech suit made from his element. Then the crystal expanded again and again, until he was contained within a titan of Order, easily fifty feet in height. A sword unspooled from the firmament, a shaft of blue light with a hilt of diamond. The sword swept down, and the world broke apart.
A wave of azure light washed over the landscape, expanding Zytal’s elemental hegemony over the ground for miles in every direction. The ground took on a similar hue, and while it did not become crystal, it was nevertheless infused with Order. Zytal flicked his sword to the side, and gravity shifted, everyone beginning to fall to the right.
“Within this space, I am God!” Zytal roared. “The laws of the universe are now mine alone.”
“If you are a god,” Rax began, “then you are an especially poor one.” As he spoke, he flew as if the gravitational field did not exit, centering himself upon Zytal. The Order mage let out a roar of rage, enhanced by his suit of crystal, echoing across the landscape.
Rax returned the favor, and as his powerful voice boomed across the land, he slashed at the massively enhanced suit of armor, cracking the crystal. With size came a loss in durability, at least at the lowly realms of E Rank, and although Zytal’s elemental mastery had spread further afield from his body, it was correspondingly less dense.
Chunks of crystal fell, and Rax flitted around an incoming sword strike, his massive body only looking graceful in comparison to the mighty sword of light. The sword sundered the ground beneath, an explosion of fractals surging up from the ground, diamonds and other gemstones, all tinged blue, creating a small mountain. The mountain rumbled, and with a sharp crack, it exploded, shards hissing across the battlefield. Whoever they struck found their bodies beginning to change into new and rigid forms.
Rax continued to tear at the armor, but he would be there for a while. Zytal continued to repair his barricade with fresh elemental energy, and until he ran out, the battle would continue.
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Meanwhile, Andovar was not faring nearly so well. Chaos did not possess the sort of defensive abilities that Order did, instead focusing on the vagaries of chance. Andovar’s luck was beginning to run out, and his manifestations of cosmic randomness were becoming progressively more useless. Talnor and Eduardo found themselves slicing through pieces of fruit and shards of rock that did not come from Earth. Pieces of cosmic debris, somehow transported there by the power of Chaos.
Andovar was fighting a losing battle, however, and his elemental reserves were less efficient than Zytal’s. Transmuting matter into something else was more energy intensive than summoning raw elemental power into the world, and for every technique that he used, he consumed double the amount of his twin. Had any of them hit, the results would have been devastating, but Talnor and Eduardo were faster than him, despite only being F Rankers. The man had almost completely neglected his physical stats in lieu of overwhelming energy mastery. Unfortunately for him, his element was abandoning him.
Had luck been with him, he could have summoned cosmic horrors from beyond the stars, or raw expressions of higher tier Daos, but across the grand scope of existence, the mundane simply outnumbered the extraordinary. Even worse, the more power he used, the less he had left to influence the wheels of chance to his favor.
The closer the two captains got to the man, the more flustered he became, not expecting two F Rankers to be able to match him. Had he been fresh to the battle, it would have been completely different, but as it was, a vast portion of his Dao energy and elemental power was drained both from his grandiose attacks earlier, and the fight with Rax. Because of this, Talnor and Eduardo were more than able to fight him.
They sliced their swords across the air, a great cross of mingled energy flying out towards Andovar. He raised his hands, a look of hatred on his face, but all that appeared in front of him was a sheet of paper, expanded to the size of a wall. The attacks sliced through without a hint of resistance, and into Andovar.
The piece of paper faded away, revealing the E Ranker collapsing to his knees, rivers of blood running down his front. His robe was split into many pieces, and his flesh, the same. A look of disbelief washed over his face, and before he could do anything more than let out a gasp, Talnor flickered to his side, lightning wreathing his form.
“It was a good fight,” Talnor said. “Had you been at your peak, we would have lost. However, war is not an arena of fairness. Farewell, and may you find something better in the next life.”
His sword descended, and sliced Andovar’s head off, spelling an end to the powerful mage. Only then did he allow the litany of wounds covering him to take effect, and he fell to one knee, leaning on his katana. Eduardo walked over, also feeling the effects of the battle, now that his adrenaline had worn off. The lingering effects of Chaos had filled his body with pathogens and toxins, and wounds that refused to heal.
“Do the others need our help?” Eduardo asked. “If you’re too wounded, I’ll aid them. You took more of a role in that battle than me.”
Talnor waved his hand. “Go ahead. It will take me a bit to recover. My durability is a bit less than yours.”
