The Nightmares Return

Tiramisu was one of those whose attitude would never change; in his two minds, Richard was the most amazing being alive. He brandished Tenton and smiled, “Will those two come out, Master?”

“What does it even matter?” Zangru said lazily, “We can just kill them if they do. Do you think two legends are a match for our lineup?”

“But what if they don’t?” Medium Rare snorted in disapproval, “Then I’ll have waited here all day without even a fight!”

Richard butted in at this moment, “Heh, you’re in for some disappointment. They probably won’t be able to get out.”

Within the altar hall, the portal from the Call of Shadows slowly closed up. A number of nightmare creatures pushed through and tried to stop it, but the force was unstoppable and just crushed them entirely. More than a hundred that were stuck in the opening exploded, a dozen or so image diamonds falling down to the ground.

The closing of a portal was determined by spatial laws, and even the most powerful creatures couldn’t survive between two spaces that were being disconnected. Their return blocked off, the remaining nightmare creatures turned to Lyos and Cyril.

However, it was in the outer void that things were most interesting. Having lost the signal from the lighthouse, the creatures in the region started trickling out from the area at a steady pace. Only the Legion of Nightmares waited quietly, hoping for it to open once more.

A portal had opened up in the middle of a large group of random nightmare creatures not too long ago, a powerful suction drawing everything nearby within. Many were alarmed at first, but looking at the foreign plane on the other side they quickly flocked in. However, none of them expected the portal to close with force in only a few minutes, none of them able to get it open.

However, the gate didn’t just disappear as it normally did. Instead, it towered silently in the void with a faint golden light flashing across its surface; the colour leaving them with a strange sense of fear. Some felt the impulse to destroy the door and bust in, but they knew that it would likely just end the portal entirely. Instead, the Legion of Nightmares quickly mobilised from the nearby region, preparing just in case the portal would open again.

……

Back within the altar hall, Lyos grabbed a shadow warrior by the neck and pulsed green energy into it, causing half of its body to disintegrate into rust even as the shade materialised in the real world. Its threat greatly reduced, he broke it apart and threw the pieces to the ground. The two-part corpse joined a number of its brethren, each looking like a distorted steel statue. While the lesser nightmare creatures had just been killed directly, the more powerful ones had been forced into a material form before being killed.

The King of Steel only had it this easy because of the giant frostiron vein under the Frozen Throne. Cyril faced much more pressure, dozens of silver threads dancing around him but growing dimmer with every creature he killed.  When he finally tore apart an enormous creature and found no other enemies nearby, he nearly collapsed from the effort.

The two panted and looked around, only sighing in relief once they could confirm that there were no other nightmare creatures nearby. Cyril looked at Lyos and smiled wryly in helplessness, starting to inspect the most serious of his injuries where one could see the internal organs wriggling. None of the wounds were fatal, but both of them had used up a great amount of their energy. Lyos only had a third of his reserves remaining, while Cyril was at a lowly tenth.

“To think he could summon so many shadows,” the Friend of Silver commented.

Lyos coughed a few times, looking at the two steel golems that still remained by his side, “He isn’t easy to deal with; he prepared this just to deal with us. None of them left the hall.”

Cyril started, looking at the walls around him as his expression grew darker. The four walls were black and shiny, made from a material he could not recognise that evidently wasn’t the original. Their senses had been dulled by spatial warping at the beginning, and with the battle starting quickly he didn’t get the time to look around. A silver thread immediately cut out a good chunk of the wall and pulled it towards him, but that only revealed that this material had seeped several metres deep into the stone.

Before Cyril could study things further, Lyos suddenly soared into the sky and screamed, “Careful! The portal’s still there!”

The Friend of Silver was surprised, looking up to find that the bizarre gate had slowly grown clearer once more. Runes lit up on it one after the other, getting faster and faster with time. The gate quickly showed signs of opening once more. Lyos pounced forwards to destroy it, knowing that a second opening would be the death of them both, but he suddenly froze up mid-flight and turned towards the passage in the wall.

Richard had appeared there at some point, an azure flame bouncing around in his hands as he stared at the two legends. The tiny flame left him feeling a sense of extreme danger, so much so that the threat of the shadow gate felt minor in comparison. He felt like the flame was terribly familiar, but he just couldn’t remember where he had seen it before.

It was Cyril that pointed with a trembling voice, “You… You can actually control the flames from the Star of Destruction?!”

Richard frowned for the slightest moment; this was the second time he had heard this phrase but he didn’t understand its origin. His blue flames definitely came from the energy of the blue moon, one of the seven satellites orbiting Norland’s sky. However, he simply stayed silent in agreement.

Lyos turned towards Richard and was about to launch forward, but he hesitated to do so. He could tell that there was an enormous ambush waiting at the end that would definitely kill him, and if Richard dared to show himself he had to be prepared. He also couldn’t shake off his fear of Richard’s flames; in such a narrow passageway, they would be impossible to avoid.

Richard took advantage of this moment to open the shadow gate, but he felt his heart freeze over the very next instant. He promptly decided to close the gate with all the mana he could throw at it in a single moment, throwing the blue fireball in his hand towards it as well. Without even caring about what would happen, he fled up the tunnel to the exit.

Even near the exit, Richard could sense the sheer danger emanating from the portal. Being much closer, Lyos and Cyril almost lost their senses. They couldn’t help but stiffen as they saw a number of nightmare lances fly out towards them from the crack, each one quite powerful in its own right. Cyril quickly recalled a terrifying legend, “The Legion of Nightmares!”

The Legion of Nightmares was different from ordinary nightmare creatures. They were an organised army that behaved with intelligence more than instinct, each troop led by a powerful general. These nightmare generals were brutal and sly, each possessing legendary might yet still possessing the same property of immunity to physical damage. The Legion was a terrifying enemy that even most legends exploring the void didn’t wish to provoke.

Just the first wave of lances numbered in the hundreds, leaving Cyril and Lyos with no choice but to give up the defence. With a flood of nightmare creatures gushing through the crack, they had to focus on killing as many as they could and just hoping they were lucky enough to survive.

The portal started to close almost as soon as it opened, but a furious bellow rang out from the other side as a large claw poked out and stabilised the connection. Within the next second the gate was fully open once more, hundreds of nightmare creatures rushing into the world. The closing of the portal might have used the power of spatial laws, but the being with the claw evidently had the sheer power to stop them at least for a little while.

However, Richard’s blue fireball flew over and slammed into the gate, instantly lighting the whole thing ablaze. These flames were incredibly aggressive, burning every nightmare creature that made contact and only growing more powerful with time. The claw pressed into the gate burnt up as well, prompting an earth-shattering roar of pain from the other side.

With the tip of the claw starting to fade away, it shook once and was withdrawn, allowing the portal to crumble to the flames. However, the altar hall was now practically filled with nightmare creatures, most of them powerful shadow warriors. Lyos and Cyril shivered, but before they could even respond a wave of blue fire flooded down the only tunnel as the few dozen warriors chasing Richard were burnt away.

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