I Can Copy And Evolve Talents

Chapter 1367: Sellswords

Sael was as surprised as he was amused to see the new entrants. He had been worried about the ship for a brief moment before he recognized it as familiar. It hadn’t been long since Northern pulled up in Drywall with a ship like this one.

But that was not what truly aided his remembrance, that recognition only came later.

What truly helped him remember was the terrifying Storm Bastion. Although this vessel seemed far more inferior to that striking and threatening warship, their resemblance was somewhat undeniable, as if they had all come from the same manufacturer.

And when Jeci and Lynus spun off the ship and joined the fray below, reducing great swathes of soldiers to nothing but empty corpses, the presence of the two made so much difference that Sael had to pause for a moment to watch them each.

The one in dark and ominous armor moved like he was a Sage. There was no wasted motion in his combat, every step folding into the next strike as though the violence was choreographed before it happened. Soldiers closed around him and it made no difference. He moved through them the way a blade moves through cloth, and the bodies he left behind barely seemed to understand they were dead.

The one with wings moved like he was an Ascendant. Where the armored one was precise, this one was overwhelming. He descended on clusters of soldiers and scattered them like debris, his wings carving through ranks with a speed that Sael’s trained eyes could barely track. Sael had spent years reading the trajectories of fast-moving things, and even he struggled to follow the path of those wings.

Both of them fought like forces instead of people, and it was somewhat inspiring to see.

Sael was not a close range combatant and he had long made peace with the role he was to play in battle. But watching these two at a moment like this made him feel somewhat wistful. They made close combat look like an art, and he would be lying if he said some part of him didn’t wish he could do the same.

Of course, he was fast. Fast enough, even. It was simply what it was. Sael did not have the ability utilization to sustain close range combat for long. For a short burst, sure, he would do handsomely well, but a drawn-out battle like this one would inevitably play to his disadvantage.

’I can just support them instead and this will end quickly.’

Sael shook his head and threw the thoughts out of his mind, then focused on the cacophony below him. He drew Tideturner’s string, using it to summon hundreds of arrows in the air. Since his essence was getting siphoned, he had to be quite careful of how he spent each volley, but against masses like this, using [Luna Aria] was still the most effective approach.

Sael narrowed his gaze with determination and released the string. Immediately hundreds of arrows descended upon the vast flood of men that filled the plain and devastated all of them.

As soldiers raised their shields, the arrows of light exploded through with brutal force. Some changed direction mid-flight to strike into exposed eyes, throwing soldiers backward and slamming them into the men behind them. Others bit into shoulders and tore all the way down to the torso. Some were powerful enough to sever limbs entirely.

The soldiers released cries of horror and scattered helter-skelter for their lives. The arrows had reduced in number but grown in potency, gaining more power and sharpness, and as if that was not enough, every path the soldiers turned it was as though death was already waiting for them.

To them this was a strange battle, the type they had never fought before. Usually, numbers like theirs should be crashing into a comparable force and fighting on equal footing, slashing at their enemy, using their talents to destroy them and showing the true might and coordination of the Empire.

They had never been in a situation where all of them would be confronted by just one man, or sometimes just three. The Empire had always been on the other side of this equation.

They had always been the ones to send out a single terrifying combatant to display the might of the Empire against lesser forces. There was no precedent for the Empire themselves tasting the dirt and insult they were so accustomed to dishing out.

No formation worked. Their drills and daily training were useless because they were siege forces, trained to tear down fortresses, to confront greater numbers of monsters or humans and diminish them within their formations.

But nothing in their training had ever addressed how to deal with one man of terrifying strength, much less three.

To make matters worse, their commander was missing for some reason, and his assistant, the man they respected and depended on, who had led them well over the years, was away dealing with the enemy on his own end.

Then more joined the fray. A terrifying creature that seemed torn out of an evil darkness descended upon them, moving with unfair speed and wielding a spear like it was some sharp rope. Their power was pure destruction, and the moment they stepped into battle, the soldiers began to slowly discover that their talents were not working.

The one who could harden terrain activated his talent and felt the familiar pull of essence leave his body, but the ground beneath him stayed soft. He tried again. Nothing. The earth that should have turned to stone remained loose dirt, and the soldiers who had been relying on the hardened ground for footing stumbled as an arrow of light punched through the man beside them.

The healer who journeyed among the ranks restoring soldiers pressed his hands to a dying man’s chest and felt his talent reach out, then collapse like a flame smothered under wet cloth. The wound stayed open. Blood kept pouring. He moved to the next soldier and tried again with the same result, and then the next, and a cold understanding settled into him that something on that battlefield was eating his power before it could take hold.

The men who flanked and protected him met brutal ends at the hands of the arrows of light, picked off one by one as though the archer above could see them perfectly through the chaos.

Until the healer himself was torn apart by the sharp wing of another who was deceiving himself thinking he was a monster.

Things got worse. The numbers increased. A woman with vermillion hair flew off the ship with flames propelling her into the sky before she landed with a tremendous explosion that rolled across the land, consuming the ranks of several soldiers. The flames were merciless and undulating, and more cries tore through the starry skies of midnight.

A girl in dark metal armor flew out of the ship too, a pair of mismatched wings unfolding behind her, each one spanning over thirty meters. One was obsidian while the other was white.

She twirled into the air and took a downward dive as several orbs of light formed around her. When she touched the ground, an explosion of pure white radiance covered the world.