Chapter 48 Solidify, duplicate, multiply.

  Shamesh’s Stars of Doom flew in at a speed that even an un-boosted normal person would be able to track. The stars did not move at breakneck speed but were still nearly as fast as a crossbow bolt. That meant that for Lenna and King Malcolm, they were practically running across the distance instead of flying. Isaac had used up most of the mana that would have gone to boosting himself in order to make Lenna and himself invisible so he was at a loss, as was Shamesh though the bone wizard was quite a bit further back.

  Malcolm shot back and to the side again in order to put Lenna in between the Stars of Doom and himself. Her sword was still stabbed through his shield and he twisted with the movement to prevent from dragging her along with him. Shamesh yanked Lenna out of the way of his own Stars of Doom with Telekinesis. He had been waiting for the next moment where he would need to do such a thing so his mental image was already primed. Malcolm put up a Reality Shield at the last moment to eat all of the Stars of Doom but it once more left him partially open.

  Isaac appeared on his flank, his boost was ramping back up to where he wanted it to be, but his sword was already sharp and strong enough to cut through Reality Shields. Malcolm’s swordspear was maneuvering around to be able to impale Lenna while she was still stuck to his shield so his entire right side, ribcage to toes, was unprotected. The tip of Isaac’s sword punched into the Reality Armor and then everything exploded. A roll of thunder and a shockwave shot out from Malcolm in every direction with enough force that even Lenna was thrown free. Her sword had been ripped out of Malcolm’s arm and only Shamesh’s quick thinking kept her from being entirely flung from the dais. They were already nearing its rearmost edge but luckily Shamesh’s Telekinesis came in just in time once more. Isaac, on the other hand, was catapulted away… directly into the ground.

  Malcolm was floating a few inches off of the ground, for Lenna that meant that her boots scraped across the ground as she was ejected from the lich king’s immediate surroundings. For Isaac it meant that, due to being in the middle of a lunge and his boost not being completely back up to snuff, he crumpled under the extreme force. His knees buckled and his back was slammed into the ground. His skull might’ve bounced off of the onyx stone dais, instead of solidly impacting it, if his feet hadn’t flown over his head. Shamesh caught him but it was all the bone wizard could do to right Isaac and deposit him just off of the edge of the dais.

  Isaac’s head momentarily swam as he was positive that he had a broken skull and a very severe concussion that had just been murdered a fraction of a second after the injuries had even come to be. Shamesh started to cast another spell even as he attempted to help Lenna out maneuver the undead former king.

  Lenna barely managed to escape the tip of Malcolm’s oblivion blade as it swept straight for her face. Shamesh did his best to help her change directions regardless of her current momentum as Malcolm suddenly pressed the attack. Her armor gained shallow cut after shallow cut as she and Shamesh snatched her life from the tip of his blade over and over again. Five such evasions happened before Isaac was ready to reenter the fray and Shamesh finished his spell. A pulse of magical disruption tried to roll out from Shamesh only for it to be drowned out and broken by a superior force.

  ‘Anti-dispelling wards, hidden inside of the dais.’ Shamesh informed Isaac. ‘Range unknown.’

  ‘That is probably why he doesn’t want to leave the dais unless he has to.’ Isaac sent back as he appeared behind Malcolm again. This time he was a bit further back and had a plan. The Frostfeather Cloak of the Empress spell that Malcolm had cascading down his back was powerful but it had one main weakness, his opponents could see how much of the spell was left based on how many feathers remained. The answer was a bit less than a thousand. Each feather wasn’t powerful on its own but a dozen of them were noticeable, a hundred were painful, and the full thousand were lethal. Isaac’s answer to that was simple: overwhelm the overwhelming counter attack cloak with pure quantity of attacks until it ran out. Isaac flicked a coin into the air and honed his senses on the shadow it cast.

  Lenna dodged another handful of attacks. She felt like she was fighting Edward multiplied by Karthen or Fable juiced up on a stimulant cooked up by Jala and cursed with a god complex. He was ruthless, efficient, exact, silent, and quite simply just better than she was. It took everything she and Shamesh had just to keep herself alive as Isaac struggled to find a way to weaken their opponent. The worst part was that he was hardly casting spells at all. He was entirely relying on his items and the wards that had cast so many buff spells on him. He was practically still fresh.

  They all knew that Malcolm was not going to go down quickly no matter what they tried. He had survived Catastrophe after all. Which begged the question: How in all of the unholy hells had he survived? That answer was crumbled near the rear of the dais. The onyx and obsidian spires had been packed to the brim with Reality Wall wards that were supposed to be used to block Gilgamesh’s Firebreath. They had been pushed past their limits and crumbled.

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  “Solidify, duplicate, multiply.” Isaac ordered the shadow of the coin and it obeyed. Malcolm whirled around and launched after Isaac at full speed. Isaac barely had enough time to shadow-step out the way before a swordspear punched through where he had just been. “Multiply. Multiply.” Isaac felt his regeneration rate halt entirely and his reserves started to dip, not just from his boosting ability but also from the two hundred and fifty six coin shaped shadows. Correction, two hundred and forty nine because Malcolm’s swordspear obliterated a few of them as he dove through the shadow-coin cloud.

  A crescent wave of pure cold turned the moisture in the air into ice, which joined the attack, was sent Isaac’s way from across the dais. Right behind it, Malcolm dove towards him like an avenging angel. Four more coins were destroyed as Isaac grinned at Malcolm and said one last thing before he vanished: “Duplicate.” Isaac simultaneously shrouded himself in shadow-cloak and shadow-stepped closer to Shamesh. “Launch.” Isaac’s word, his command, echoed through mana itself immediately before all of the surviving coins obeyed. Right at the same time, Shamesh finished his next spell.

  Isaac had told Shamesh to wait for the perfect time to hit Malcolm with a Disintegrate and he did just that. As soon as Isaac had started creating an army of coins, Shamesh had used that opportunity to begin casting said obliteration spell. Isaac’s final command, ‘Launch’, was perfectly timed to coincide with Shamesh’s branch of absolute destruction.

  Malcolm noticed what Shamesh was up to, however, much to the bone wizard’s annoyance, and he turned around and put up a Reality Shield in the Disintegrate’s path once again. Lenna came sprinting in from the side. Four hundred and ninety coin shaped hardened shadows shot towards his back. For the briefest of moments, Malcolm was stuck in place. His cloak fired off at least one frostfeather into each of Isaac’s coins in order to disrupt and destroy it. Some of them, the ones in the shade of the others, took two feathers to destroy instead.

  While Malcolm’s cloak’s feathers were being consumed en masse, and his Reality Shield was being sacrificed to Disintegrate, his right arm was forced to maintain the position of the Reality Shield as the staff was spatial locked to the shield and the shield was in the processes of being deleted from existence over the course of around a tenth of a second. With his right arm frozen in place, he could only block Lenna’s incoming attack with his shield once more.

  Battlefields were often noisy affairs. Warriors screamed and mages attempted to blow everything to the heavens and hells. This one was almost eerily quiet. Shamesh made no sounds save for the occasional quiet spell chant that was barely louder than a whisper. The only sounds from Lenna were her boots on the dais and the swish of flames being drug through the air at high speeds. Isaac’s every move was silent with only his Words of Power resounding throughout the battlefield. And Malcolm, he was the worst of them. He hadn’t spoken a word since the fight had started. His fighting style was entirely silent as his non-existent blade cut through the air itself and his ice magic made hardly a crackle. The only exception being when he blasted Isaac and Lenna away from him, even his few spells were silent. That was why it was made all the more noticeable when Lenna’s sword screeched through Malcolm’s shield as it tore and cut the enchanted metal.

  Once again, Lenna’s sword punched through the shield, and even the armor beneath, from sheer force in both the physical and magical way. The sword flared as it tried to utterly consume the shield, armor, and arm that it found itself punching through. Lenna’s aura raged. Her mana charged. Malcolm’s arm shattered along with the magical armor underneath. An explosion of black, purple, and green flames washed over Lenna as Malcom’s bracer blasted apart. His shield thoroughly embedded itself into Lenna’s crossguard and he was thrown backwards from the item detonating.

  Lenna felt a powerful curse try to latch onto her and she threw everything her aura had at it. “Prayer!” Lenna called out and dropped to one knee. Her sword continued to flare as Malcolm’s shield was steadily turned to slag. With every movement it was still being cut, it was rapidly draining away Lenna’s free temporary artifact. She didn’t have time to think about it however as she was forced to dedicate everything she had, every ounce of focus, mana, aura, and will on the singular task of fighting back the curse that had decided to wish for her demise.

  Isaac launched into action, entirely on the offensive as his shadow-cloak fell away and his sword was once again going for Malcolm’s back. The last dozen frostfeathers shot at his face but he blocked them with one arm. The feathers wrapped together and formed a solid frozen coating over his arm and ice crystals clung to his hair. Malcolm was forced to retreat once more, this time without an arm to potentially block the dark mage. Sure, Lenna was temporarily down for the count but they all knew that it was only a matter of time before the nearly maximum level paladin burned away the curse entirely.

  Malcolm tried to counter attack time and again but each time the only thing he hit was Isaac’s fading silhouette. Each miss caused him to have to dodge Isaac’s next attack. Each dodge forced him to worry about whether or not Shamesh was ready to capitalize on it. Each worry kept him from being able to end Lenna. Malcolm had finally been pushed back into somewhat of a corner. With his shield gone for good, along with his arm and bracer, he would have a noticeably harder time fighting Gilgamesh. The thing was, Malcolm had already realized that fleeing was not really an option as long as the three he was fighting were still alive. If they were all at their maximum potential, then he would have already lost and he knew that. That was why he needed to end them right away and then flee. Once he was gone, he would be able to regroup with his scattered apprentices, raise another army, and then plan another attack on Gilgamesh and his chosen mountain.

  Malcolm chanted and swept his staff in the direction of each of the three who had been pressuring him as much as he had expected the ancient dragon to. “Die. Die. Die.”