In a single strike, nearly ten thousand soldiers were wiped off the battlefield, done, finished, without a chance to react.
Liam stepped aside casually, dodging a massive slab of fractured ground crashing down from above.
Boom!
His right hand remained tucked in his pocket, the other loosely hanging as he hopped back with ease.
His gaze swept over the torn earth and smoldering debris, a light smile forming at the corners of his lips.
"Then maybe two hundred thousand would do it," he muttered, eyes narrowing with mild curiosity. "If not… then three hundred thousand."
Another jagged chunk plummeted from the sky.
He pivoted without urgency, sidestepping the falling debris like an afterthought, before glancing upward at the storm of stone.
Farther away from the chaos, stationed as planned, several hundred battle mages lifted their arms.
And then.
Dozens upon dozens of dark fireballs shot upward before curving down in a broad arc, descending like meteors toward the battlefield.
The towering tree-like giants shifted slightly, their awareness alerted by the sudden change, but their posture didn't falter.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The barrage struck in waves, slamming into their bark-clad limbs, their hunched torsos, even the thick slabs of shield bark they carried.
Fire burst across their surfaces.
Acrid smoke rose in plumes.
Charred bark split, and the scent of burning moss spread through the air.
Liam, however, didn't look convinced.
His gaze was already locked beyond the frontline, drifting upward, tracing the still figure floating high above.
His brows lowered.
Something itched at the back of his mind.
And then her voice rang out, calm, almost offhanded.
"Neutralize."
The sound was light, but it cut through the battlefield like a needle of light through canvas.
A ripple pulsed across the giant trees, washing over them like a wave of transparency.
A moment later, the flames vanished.
Thin veils of light coated their bodies, glimmering faintly like soap bubbles catching the last shimmer of day.
The fire clinging to them hissed, popped, then faded to nothing.
The smoke dispersed in seconds.
The battlefield, once scorched and ablaze, returned to silence.
"…She really doesn't know how to fight properly," Liam muttered, his voice oddly appreciative. "But damn, just her abilities alone… they sweep everything I throw at her."
He chuckled again, low and amused, before launching himself backwards, feet skimming along cracked ground.
He landed far enough away to stretch his fingers in preparation.
From his hand, dozens of glimmering diagrams burst out, tiny geometric patterns dancing into the air like sparks from a flame.
"Well… guess I'll need some defensive formations of my own. Best way to stop those trees is to drop their commander."
"That is if I am able to do that"
The diagrams didn't remain still.
They twisted in midair, linking and rearranging themselves rapidly.
Lines curved into sigils, then sharpened into directional glyphs.
With a flick, Liam launched them into the distance, each one darting toward the sky, spreading across the battlefield's perimeter.
Seconds ticked by.
Below, the collision between his shadow soldiers and Mize's tree legion erupted.
The giants swung their massive blades, casting wide arcs.
The shadow soldiers slipped between them, slicing upward in dense formations.
Screams of impact and steel rang across the battlefield. Sadly enough, it was a one sided massacre.
Liam's hand hovered in the air.
Then, like pulling a taut thread, he clenched his palm.
Zoom!
A strange pulsing noise streaked across the sky.
The sky began to dim.
It had already been dark before, gloomy and strange.
This darkness wasn't just absence of light. It layered itself over the sky like ink bleeding through parchment.
Zoom.
The gloom spread quickly, swallowing what little visibility remained.
Shadows pooled into the heavens above until the ceiling of this realm became pure black.
The diagrams had taken hold under whatever Liam had ongoing.
Liam's expression didn't change, but his eyes glinted.
Then, it happened.
The darkness began to fall, first in specks, like ash on the wind.
Then more.
The flecks became strands, the strands turned to rain.
A downpour of shadows bled from above, seeping into every crevice of the battlefield.
Like snowflakes but darkened.
The ground blackened.
The broken earth, the scattered rubble, the shattered foundations, all were covered by the ink-like sheen.
Even the air itself darkened, shadows curling into visible mist.
Tendrils of darkness spread outward, dulling everything they touched.
Within moments, the battlefield was unrecognizable.
Liam didn't need anything elaborate.
His goal was simple, give his shadow soldiers terrain they could thrive in and strip the giant trees of their visual edge.
He knew Mize well enough.
Her creation ability was almost unfair, powerful, extremely too perverted.
Given enough time, she could reshape her surroundings into nearly anything she imagined.
But her strength had a limit.
Mental fatigue was the only bottleneck he could exploit.
So the answer was straightforward: overwhelm her by scale.
Build something big enough, chaotic enough, that even her mental strength couldn't reach it all.
And formations were perfect for that.
"I see…" Mize's voice echoed faintly.
Her ruby eyes hovered coldly as she scanned the warping field around her.
The haze rolled in every direction, swallowing lines, soldiers, land, all distinctions bleeding into one mass of giant shadow.
She looked down.
The ground was no longer a battlefield. It was a shifting canvas of ink and confusion.
Her eyes narrowed, tracking faint movement along the edge of the mist, tiny sigils crawling across the darkness.
"Formations?"
"How interesting"
Her lips pressed into a thin line.
"They're even harder to detect in the dark," she murmured, her head tilting slightly to the side.
A pause.
Her gaze traced the formation lines weaving through the fog, still faintly glowing, like fireflies swimming in tar.
"Changing the terrain... "
"Huh"
Her tone remained flat, but her frown deepened.
And far below her, the tide of battle had already shifted.
Shadow soldiers surged forward.
The giant trees, their lines no longer pristine, adjusted slowly. The rhythm had changed.
The field, once balanced, had begun to tilt.
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Dense array of fireballs came from the sky, hidden between the thickets of the shadows, hardly detectable.
Despite being unable to burn, the impact these fireballs caused caused the wooden guards formation to falter.
And the occasional harassment from the tiny shadow soldiers on all sides caused their movements to be hindered greatly.
The miasma blanketing the battlefield wasn't lethal in itself, but it crept through the space like damp fog crawling up old stone walls, clinging, distorting, slowing.
Every step the towering trees took came with a subtle dissonance now.
Bark cracked from unseen collisions. Roots twisted into odd angles mid-motion.
Nothing fatal yet, but if things continued like this, the tide would shift.
Mize could already sense the imbalance taking hold.
She hovered above the battlefield, dress fluttering weightlessly in the stagnant air, her gaze dull as it swept across the distorted terrain.
The darkness was too thick that it covered everything in it.
Liam was hiding again.
"Tch…" Her expression barely shifted, just the faintest twitch at the edge of her mouth.
"Using darkness to shield himself… giving his soldiers an ideal hunting ground... and those formations, those must be the cause behind this strange shift."
"The worst part? Those formations moved... Constantly"
Her body rose slowly as she ascended into clearer air.
Her gaze remained fixed below, not so much watching as measuring.
"Then I'll choose annihilation," she said flatly.
"Hiding only works when there's something left to hide behind."
The words hung in the air, cold and distant.
Her thoughts turned inward, ticking like clockwork.
She extended one hand forward, fingers parting gracefully.
A small orb shimmered into existence, a marble-sized sphere of condensed light, pulsing in a deep, otherworldly violet.
It floated calmly between her fingers, almost serene despite the dense atmosphere surrounding her.
"Purple... Pull."
Her opposite hand mirrored the motion, fingertips curling outward as another orb blinked into being.
This one glowed faint blue, softer, colder.
She brought the two spheres together, slowly pressing them against each other with both palms, as if molding something delicate between glass sheets.
"Blue... Contract."
The air thinned.
Somewhere below, roots began to tremble.
And then.
Boom.
Boom.
Boom.
The sky shuddered with three heavy pulses, not quite explosions but not anything natural either, more like the echo of something vast and alive waking up from deep below.
Far across the battlefield, Liam was a blur within the shadowed terrain, crouched between two jagged cracks in the ground.
His sleeves were rolled back to his elbows, fingertips dancing through the air as he shaped another cluster of formation diagrams in rapid succession.
Each flicker of his hands sparked new symbols.
He was focused.
Until the sound reached him.
The pulsing beats, low, heavy, and it reached his ears, alarming.
A rhythm that didn't belong here.
It echoed through the air and the earth both, and when it passed through him, his movements paused.
Eyes narrowing, Liam tilted his head toward the darkened sky.
His breath caught mid-motion.
"…Why do I feel…" he murmured, " death?"
His fingers stilled, hovering just above a half-formed seal.
And up above, something had begun to change.