Chapter 175 - 172 - The Battle of Cordova V
The human eye adjusts itself to the light level of the environment. In dark environments, it grows more sensitive to light. In bright environments, it grows less sensitive. This adjustment takes time, and rapid changes in light level can be temporarily blinding.
The Legendary Smith's helmet was fully enclosed. An enchantment of [Greater Perception] gave him a complete field of view in every direction, even behind himself.
But even that enchantment was being overwhelmed by the surging lux and nox essence in the air.
The Smith landed amid the ritual summoning the Great Spirit Nox, and for a moment he was totally blind.
And then he raised his hammer and slammed it down into the ground before him.
[Appraisal]: Lumina-saturated Compressed Mythril War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master, Durability: 403 (Oversmithed), Enchantment: Nova Blast—Secret Master (988)
It was a suicide weapon.
[Nova Blast] was simply too powerful to contain in any useful way.
The Smith hadn't intended to use the hammer in this battle. It was an exercise in enchantment design, mainly.
But the light that burst forth from the hammer strike, magically-analogous to the light of a star exploding, could not be contained.
Not without divine intervention.
With no karmic debt, the [Nova Blast] was merely strengthened and redirected further outwards indiscriminately.
Over five thousand demons were instantly vaporized.
Another ten thousand demons were permanently blinded.
The indistinct void of Great Spirit Nox collapsed, and the ritual summoning the Great Spirit Lux was empowered.
Again, the Smith found himself blinded despite his helmet.
But his ward was still in place.
[Define Territory]
It wasn't his domain, but he knew the direction and location of the center of the summoning ritual that had nearly finished.
He didn't use a hammer.
Instead, he withdrew a tube from his [Spatial Storage], taking advantage of the nox essence in the air to conserve that much more magic power, and launched a cartridge enchanted with the kind of enchantment that would infuriate the Tower Wizard.
[Greater Void Hole—Singularity]
This was a self-propagating enchantment.
It was an apocalypse.
It was an indiscriminate absorption of all matter, energy, and light. Everything was converted into the void, and the void expanded.
It started first by absorbing the cartridge itself, and collapsing into the tiniest pinprick of darkness surrounded by a halo of light at the event horizon.
Then it absorbed the nearby air, creating a vacuum that slowly built into a cyclone of air swirling across the event horizon and into oblivion.
Then it absorbed the light and lux-essence, and the blinding light dimmed, and faded.
Lux screamed.
Even the Great Spirit, absorbed into such a void, would be killed.
It would be the death of Lux, and the doom of the world and magic.
The void rapidly expanded, from the size of a finger tip, to the size of a fist, then a head, then a body, then five yards across—
Lux fully formed.
And then she instantly slaughtered all fifteen thousand remaining demons involved in her summoning, a single ray of light obliterating each head, and then she fled the material plane, desperate to avoid falling into the void.
The void was now twenty yards across, its growth accelerating, and the Smith pushed on the enchantment, working to dismantle it.
The void was too strong.
Still pushing, trying to slow it down, he summoned six more tubes, and launched them all.
One scattered more needle-like stakes, creating a warding field of [Master Dispel].
He hadn't wanted to use this ward.
His own enchantments would be useless if he entered that territory now, and he would be a sitting duck for the demons.
Still, the void resisted him.
The other five cartridges formed a circle above the straining void, and beams of ultraviolet light shot between them, forming a pentagram and magic circle.
Another self-perpetuating enchantment, but with a finite sum.
It would not cause an apocalypse.
No, it would contain one.
[Ritual: Drain Darkness]
The darkness aspect of the void was drained, and all the derivative aspects as well, converted into mana and channeled via [Spatial Link] back into the magic power storage circuits and crystals in the Smith's workshop.
The void halted. No longer expanding.
But also not shrinking.
Air and light continued to be sucked into the void.
The magic power circuits recharged.
Recharged fast.
Too fast.
The Smith pulled out several more tubes and fired them in the direction of the demon army, now between him and the city, which had started to advance on the defenseless city.
It had only been minutes since he noticed the rituals, but they were racing ahead.
He fired the tubes.
Fwump.
Fwump.
Fwump.
Fwump.
[[[[Fimbulwinter]]]]
The Smith no longer had the self-perpetuating version he had been using before.
These were prototypes that ran on supplied magic power.
He needed them both to slow the demon army's advance and to drain the tremendous amount of magic power he was absorbing from the apocalyptic void he had used to banish Lux.
There was another reason.
He had [Fire Storm], [Hell Fire], and even a [Gehenna] cartridge he could have used as well.
But it had to be Ice.
Because Salamander had been successfully summoned while he was dealing with the void.
There was a terrible draconic roar, and a blast of heat swept through the Plains in all directions.
The earth was scorched.
Sand melted into glass.
Every plant turned to ash.
The [Fimbulwinter] generating cartridges strained, pulling even more magic power in the face of the heat.
The void started to shrink, but slowly.
Oh so slowly.
The Smith wanted to think about ways to safely discharge the magic power of the void.
Shooting light straight into the sky, perhaps?
But there was no time.
Salamander was a drake, forty yards tall at the haunch, with a tail as long as its body, and it was inhaling, a bright red light visible deep in its throat.
And it was looking in the direction of the city, beyond the wintry wall.
[Spatial Linking]
James poured as much magic power as he could into his greaves, and the [Divine Lightspeed Haste] enchantment.
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He stored away his war hammers and summoned into his left hand a Greatshield, and into his right hand a war hammer.
And he flew directly in front of Salamander's mouth as it blasted dragonfire at the city that was his home.
[Appraisal]: Lumina-saturated Compressed Layered Red Tungsten Greatshield, Quality: Secret Master, Durability: 999 (Oversmithed), Enchantments: Perfect Enhanced Reflection—Secret Master (666), Heat Reflection—Master (333)
The Dragonproof Greatshield was one of the Legendary Smith's masterpieces, even among all his fantastic creations. It perfectly balanced the materials, perfectly made use of the substrate, and perfectly balanced dual enchantments with perfect synergy.
And yet, the opponent was Great Spirit Salamander of Fire himself.
Though his dragonfire blast was perfectly reflected, it was no matter.
He was the concept of Fire made manifest.
Fire could not hurt him, not even his own.
Nor could any derivative aspect of that element.
Solar, Inferno, Gehenna, not even the creations of the Itinerant Baker could cause him the slightest harm.
And then Salamander was struck across the jaw with a Bastard War Hammer that hurt him quite a lot.
His scales froze where directly struck, and his jawbone cracked. Hoarfrost spread beyond the direct impact site, and didn't immediately recover.
He roared in anger, and slapped the shiny human out of the sky, sending him crashing into the ground.
The Smith, upon taking the blast of Salamander's dragonfire directly on his shield at close range, had nearly been panicking.
Nearly panicking, okay?
Not actually panicking.
He was the Legendary Smith.
But he had summoned onto himself an incredible number of accessories.
He wasn't particularly fond of accessories.
As popular as they were with the upper nobility and his wife, he preferred to rely directly on his armor sets, which gained a set bonus that accessories usually did not, save for paired items like earrings.
And yet, as he endured dragonfire for the second time in his life, he found himself summoning amulet after amulet around his neck; bracelets and anklets to his extremities, and as many earrings as he could fit into his ears, gouging holes into the cartilage without any care as to the damage to his body or the aesthetics of it.
Not for [Heat Resistance], no.
Proper annealing of the substrate before and after substrate compression would make enchantments more resistant to heat.
Mythril already resisted heat quite well anyway.
And besides that his underarmor was woven with climate control enchantments that extended to his outer armor.
Even Salamander's dragonfire would struggle to damage his enchantments by heat alone, and his Dragonproof Greatshield was functioning perfectly.
No, he was summoning onto himself every single [Ice Nullification] accessory he had access to in his storage.
Over twenty accessories worn simultaneously.
It had taken the Smith over a month of work to overcome himself and complete the war hammer he now wielded.
The problem was, as before, that the war hammer was too strong.
This might sound unbelievable, given that the Smith had summoned a self-sustained Greater Void without a second thought.
But the Ice Hammer of Self-Destruction had been the turning point.
That was the hammer that had ruined his hand, and created self-doubt in himself as a crafter.
It had been a mental block, and only by reforging the strongest Ice War Hammer he could, and proving that he was master of himself, had he been able to reach the highest heights of enchanting.
Much to the Tower Wizard's chagrin and displeasure.
[Appraisal]: Glacia-saturated Compressed Blue Mythril Bastard War Hammer, Quality: Secret Master (Over), Durability: 1002 (Oversmithed), Enchantment: Absolute Zero_Entropy_「Heat Death of the Universe 」—Secret Master (Over) (1866)
In the Dungeon, it had been the Ice War Hammer that had ruined his right hand, and started his spiral into despair.
The problem had been that the enchantment design, [Basic Water Enchantment: Frostbite], had lacked a key safety cutout for excessive magic power use. Enchantment with a Water Magic Stone, or without Water Essence, or on a properly designed weapon with a better handle, would have prevented [Frostbite] backlash.
The problem with the Entropy Hammer was that there was no safety cutout built into the design at all.
It had been a personal, mental challenge for the Smith. To push his creativity and his crafting beyond his own limits.
The only safety feature at all was the handle, which was properly designed and insulated. All the power of the enchantment was focused on the hammer head.
There shouldn't be any backlash at all.
James had never tested it.
No way!
Making the hammer was one thing, that was overcoming a past trauma.
Actually using it?
Never!
The hammer had sat in a containment device within his workshop, never seeing the light of day after it was created and appraised for the first time.
Until today.
When the Smith summoned it directly into his hand and swung without further hesitation.
[Technique: Hammer Strike]
[Absolute Zero]
Crack!
Bone cracked, scales shattered and froze over.
Wham!
The Smith found himself smacked into the ground. He quickly righted himself, regaining his footing.
Salamander was glaring down at him, snarling as wisps of smoke trailed from his nostrils.
And…
The Smith breathed a sigh of relief.
The Entropy Hammer had worked.
A knot of hesitation that he hadn't even realized he'd been carrying relaxed itself in his mind.
That little bit of holding himself back was now gone forever.
He could do this.
He could do anything.
The magic power being drained from the void was getting close to saturating his magic power storage system back in his workshop.
The [Fimbulwinter]-generating cartridges were at maximum output, and the demons found themselves struggling through gale winds and snowdrifts higher than houses as they pushed to advance on Cordova.
Dragonfire blasted down onto the Smith's Greatshield, held over his head, and the Smith opened the floodgates.
He poured as much magic power into the Entropy Hammer as he had calculated it could handle without overloading.
With an enchantment rating of 1866, that was an unfathomably large amount of mana.
But he had a nearly infinite source at the moment.
He could sense the void struggling, but shrinking anyway. It was down to nineteen yards across, and inch by inch, growing smaller.
The dragonbreath faded and the Smith dashed forward with all haste, and slammed the Entropy Hammer into Salamander's foreleg.
[Technique: Hammer Strike]
[Absolute Zero]
[Entropy]
「Heat Death of the Universe」
There was no sound.
All color faded to monochrome.
A chill beyond mere physical cold swept through the entire Kingdom of Iberteria, and all the neighboring kingdoms.
Something that should not be collided with a fundamental force underpinning the magic of the world.
Salamander felt death upon him.
But unlike Lux, who had recognized the threat in time and had slaughtered the beings that were summoning her, he could no longer act.
The very concept of heat was dying.
The world nearly ended right then and there.
But then the wave of cold blasted through the assembled demons conducting the ritual and every cell in their bodies froze, and they collapsed into piles of diamond dust.
Free of the summoning, Salamander immediately fled the encroaching cold of certain death.
The magic power channeled into the strike had increased the flow of drained magic power from the void, as though it were being pulled along by a raging river current, and the void collapsed, from fifteen yards across to the tiniest pinprick, and the warding field of [Master Dispel] took hold and ended the self-propagating apocalypse.
In as many seconds, the world avoided ending twice.
In the span of about ten minutes, at noon on the second day of the Battle for Iberteria, an estimated sixty thousand demons perished attempting to summon the six Great Spirits to battle.
An estimated one hundred and twenty thousand demons remained, with the Legendary Smith deep behind enemy lines, and the demons struggling to pass through the blizzards protecting the city from Salamander's fiery wrath and the invading genocidal demons.
But the Smith had no time to rest.
Spear wielding demons struck his breastplate before they even thrust their spears, inverting causality.
Demons wielding greatbows rained lances as tall as he was and as thick as his leg on his position, overwhelming his [Arrowbane].
Monsters rampaged around chaotically, attacking each other and the demons alike, and every now and then, attacking the Smith himself.
Wyvern fire splashed down on top of him, scorching nearby demons who wore little more than animal furs and simple cloth outfits.
A lance of holy magic impaled the wyvern and pinned it to the ground.
The battlefield was arranged thusly:
In the back, there was the Legendary Smith.
The frontline was an arc comprised of the blizzards summoned by the Smith's [Fimbulwinter]-enchanted cartridges, bulging outwards towards the city.
In between the Legendary Smith and the frontline was the demon army, still over one hundred thousand demons strong.
And beyond the blizzards was the defenseless, anarchic city of Cordova, currently largely on fire from the earthquakes that had opened the battle.
So began the afternoon.