Chapter 113: A Decoy
Deep inside the Aether-Forge, Lucifer lowered his Gauntlet of the Void King.
The dark singularity that had consumed High Warlock Xoroth vanished into the air. The Warlord stood perfectly still with his void-swirling eyes locked onto the empty space where the mage had just been standing.
Something was wrong.
Lucifer opened his system interface. The Warlord expected to see the standard kill confirmation for a Level 50 Epic enemy. He expected the Carnage Core to pulse with a heavy influx of death magic.
Instead, a jagged yellow warning box flickered across his vision!
[System Alert: Anomaly Detected.]
[Target Consumed: Abyssal Simulacrum (Decoy Entity).]
[Experience Yield: 0.]
[True Entity Location: Unknown.]
Lucifer’s expression hardened into a mask of pure cold iron.
"It was a fake," Lucifer stated smoothly with his voice carrying a dangerous low rumble.
Elara spun around. Her violet-flaming spear hummed. The Eclipse Valkyrie stared at the empty floor.
"A decoy? But the aura was perfect. The dark magic felt exactly like a high-tier Warlock."
"Abyssal Simulacrum," Vexia hissed from the metal catwalk. The Sanguine Princess bared her fangs in absolute frustration. "It is a forbidden spell.
The caster splits a fraction of their soul to create a perfect physical duplicate. The decoy dies, and the caster uses the distraction to bypass wards."
"He used the Revenant Lord and the fake bomb to draw us all down to the lower forge," Lucifer analyzed rapidly.
If the Warlock was not in the Aether-Forge, there was only one other place he could do catastrophic damage to the floating city!
"The Upper Conduit," Lucifer said softly.
He tapped his comms rune immediately.
"Sarah," Lucifer commanded.
Static hissed through the line. The connection to the Spire of Celestial Convergence was completely jammed by heavy localized Abyssal magic.
"He is in the upper levels," Lucifer ordered and drew his ruby-red longsword. "Move."
***
Ten thousand feet higher in the pristine white-marble antechamber sitting directly beneath the golden Spire of Celestial Convergence.
This room housed the Primary Conduit! It was the massive glowing pillar of blue and purple energy that transferred the Void-Core Reactor’s power up into the magical arrays of the floating city.
The shadows in the corner of the pristine room twisted violently.
A pool of pitch-black liquid magic boiled on the white marble floor. The true High Warlock Xoroth stepped out of the dark!
He did not look burned or beaten. His midnight blue robes were immaculate. His twisted petrified staff pulsed with an intense sickly green light.
He smirked and a cruel arrogant expression spread across his gaunt pale face.
[System: Infiltration Successful.]
[Target Area: Primary Conduit Room.]
"Fools," Xoroth whispered to himself. His black pupil-less eyes locked onto the towering pillar of energy in the center of the room.
"The Warlord chases shadows in the basement, while I stand at the heart of his kingdom."
Xoroth reached into his robes. He pulled out the true Abyssal Charge.
It was a jagged heavy black crystal that radiated pure concentrated destruction. If he planted this explosive directly onto the Primary Conduit, the resulting blast would shatter the magical tethers keeping Zephyria in the sky!
The entire mountain would plummet out of the stratosphere and crush the human capital and everyone inside the floating fortress.
The Warlock took a confident step toward the glowing blue pillar.
"You are out of time, Warlock."
Xoroth froze!
The musical perfectly calm voice echoed through the silent antechamber. It did not come from behind him. It came from the shadows directly in front of the conduit.
The ambient light in the room shifted. A brilliant pure silver glow pushed back the dark.
Sarah stepped out from behind the massive energy pillar!
The Star-Touched Oracle wore her pristine white dress. She held the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment in both hands. The massive violet orb at the tip of the mythic staff hummed with raw restrained power.
Her cosmic eyes swirled with galaxies of silver and violet dust. They were locked directly onto Xoroth.
She did not look surprised. She looked prepared.
"The Oracle," Xoroth sneered. He recovered from his initial shock quickly. He gripped his twisted staff and laughed a cold grating laugh.
"They left the fragile little prophet to guard the main engine? The Warlord is more foolish than I thought."
"He didn’t leave me," Sarah corrected him smoothly. "I waited for you."
Xoroth’s dark eyes narrowed. "You saw the decoy."
"I see the timelines," Sarah stated. She did not back away. She stood her ground and placed herself directly between the Warlock and the conduit. "My sight is amplified a thousandfold by the Spire above us. I saw the shadow split. I saw your true path."
"Seeing the path does not mean you can block it, girl," Xoroth spat.
He raised his twisted staff.
The High Warlock was a Level 50 Dark Magus. He did not waste time with monologues. He channeled a massive surge of pure corrosive Abyssal magic directly into the amber crystal of his weapon!
"Die in the dark!" Xoroth roared.
He unleashed a torrent of screaming black skulls forged of localized Void magic! The skulls ripped through the air, left trails of burning green fire, and aimed directly for Sarah’s chest.
[System Warning: Hostile Spell Detected!]
[Spell: Wail of the Damned (Epic)]
[Effect: Inflicts heavy necrotic damage and absolute magical silence.]
Sarah did not flinch.
Sarah spun the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment.
She slammed the base of the mythic staff onto the white marble floor.
"Star-Wall," Sarah commanded.
A perfectly smooth curved barrier of solid blinding silver starlight erupted from the floor!
The screaming black skulls slammed into the barrier. The impact was deafening. The necrotic magic hissed and boiled against the starlight, trying to eat through the cosmic energy.
The barrier cracked slightly under the intense Level 50 barrage.
But it held!
Xoroth’s eyes widened in sheer disbelief. "Impossible! You are a support class! You cannot block an Epic evocation!"
"I am the Star-Touched," Sarah replied with her voice echoing with newfound fierce authority.
She did not just stand behind the shield. She pushed forward!
Sarah channeled her mana. The Spire of Celestial Convergence towering just a few floors above her resonated perfectly with her core.
The Wonder acted as a massive limitless battery and funneled the ambient cosmic energy of the stratosphere directly into her veins.
The violet orb on her scepter flared to the intensity of a miniature sun!
Xoroth took a step backward and suddenly realized he was not fighting a fragile low-level prisoner. He was fighting a Mythic-tier caster standing in the exact center of her own amplification grid!
"Shadow Bind!" Xoroth yelled in panic and threw his left hand forward.
Thick black tentacles of pure dark matter erupted from the floor and lunged toward Sarah’s ankles to lock her in place!
Sarah ignored them. The starlight radiating from her body was so intense that the shadow tentacles literally burned to ash the moment they came within three feet of her white dress.
She raised the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment high into the air.
She looked up with her cosmic eyes piercing through the heavy stone ceiling and connecting directly to the infinite starry night sky above Zephyria.
"You brought the Abyss into my home," Sarah declared. Her musical voice turned into a devastating resonant chord of celestial power.
She locked onto the light of a distant massive blue star millions of lightyears away. She used the Scepter to pull that specific ancient light directly into the room!
"Starlight Purge," Sarah whispered.
[System: Mythic Spell Cast!]
[Spell: Starlight Purge]
[Source: Star-Touched Oracle (Amplified by Wonder)]
[Effect: Unleashes a concentrated beam of absolute cosmic purification. Deals 500% critical damage to Abyssal and Void entities.]
The ceiling of the antechamber did not break. The magic bypassed physical matter entirely!
A blinding colossal pillar of pure solid blue-white starlight crashed down from the heavens! It filled the entire room with an impossible searing brightness.
The beam struck High Warlock Xoroth directly on the top of his head!
The Warlock’s screams were instantaneous and horrific.
The Starlight Purge did not cause a concussive explosion. It triggered a violent chemical reaction with the Abyssal magic saturated in Xoroth’s blood and core.
His dark magic literally caught fire!
Thick midnight-blue flames erupted from Xoroth’s robes. The amber crystal on his petrified staff shattered into a thousand pieces and was unable to contain the absolute cosmic purity. The dark matter in his veins boiled!
"My eyes!" Xoroth shrieked and dropped the Abyssal Charge.
He clawed at his own face. The blinding starlight burned away his corneas and instantly blinded the dark mage! The flesh on his hands and face blistered and charred, turning black as the holy fire consumed him from the inside out.
[System: Critical Hit! Target suffers Absolute Burn.]
[Target: High Warlock Xoroth (Health -85%)]
The sheer kinetic force of the continuous starlight beam slammed into his chest. Xoroth was violently thrown backward and his boots skidded across the white marble floor!
He reeled back from the Primary Conduit, completely repelled by the blast.
He crashed heavily against the far stone wall and slid down into a pathetic smoking heap. His robes were reduced to ash. His twisted staff was a charred stick. He gasped for air and his ruined blind eyes stared blankly ahead.
Sarah lowered the Scepter of Cosmic Alignment.
The blinding pillar of starlight faded and left the antechamber bathed in a soft quiet silver glow. The air smelled of burnt ozone and purified magic.
Sarah’s chest heaved. Sweat beaded on her pale forehead but she remained standing. She looked down at the smoking broken Warlock on the floor. She had not needed the Warlord or the Valkyrie to save her. She had held the line herself!
The heavy iron doors of the antechamber suddenly imploded!
They did not swing open. They were ripped off their hinges and thrown across the room by a massive pulse of spatial gravity.
Lucifer walked through the ruined doorway.
The Warlord’s dark armor absorbed the ambient light. The Carnage Core pulsed a violent ruby-red at his hip. His void-swirling eyes scanned the room instantly.
He took in the dropped Abyssal Charge, the glowing Primary Conduit, and the smoking Warlock collapsed against the wall.
Elara rushed in right behind him with her violet-flaming spear raised.
Lucifer stopped in the center of the room. He looked at Sarah.
The Oracle turned to him. She offered a tired but fiercely proud smile. She rested the base of her mythic staff on the white marble floor.
"The reactor is secure, Commander," Sarah reported with her voice steady. "He did not touch the core."
Lucifer looked at the devastation she had caused. He looked at the blind crippled Level 50 Warlock whimpering against the far wall.
A cold genuine smirk of absolute approval broke across the Warlord’s face.
"Flawless work, Oracle," Lucifer stated smoothly. He drew his ruby-red longsword. "You broke his magic. I will break the rest."