Chapter 130: Outnumbered
The queen's angry buzz vibrated through the clearing as she gathered power for another attack. This time, instead of a focused blast, she released a widespread wave of void energy that began breaking down everything it touched. Trees withered, leaves crumbled, and the air itself seemed to grow thin.
I activated Aegis Mark, trusting the barrier to buy me time as I Blink Stepped through the devastation. The remaining stage fives pressed their advantage, attacking from different angles while I was focused on avoiding the queen's power.
A stinger scraped across my barrier, draining energy faster than I'd expected. These things were basically flying qi vampires, and they were very good at their job.
"Master," Azure's voice held a note of concern, "this prolonged battle is inadvisable. The continuous qi drain from their attacks, combined with the energy cost of maintaining multiple runes..."
"I know," I cut him off, ducking under another strike. "But I need to thin their numbers before I can deal with the queen, their teamwork is making it difficult to target her.”
Speaking of these stage fives. They were wearing me down through attrition, and while I could probably outlast them normally, the queen's presence made that impossible.
Time to lure them in.
I dropped my leaf barrier entirely, leaving myself seemingly exposed. As expected, both stage fives immediately moved to attack. At the last possible moment, I activated Hawk Eye and Titan's Crest simultaneously.
The world slowed to a crawl as I pushed off the branch and flew through the air, slipping between their attacks with millimeters to spare. Before they could recover, I created a dense cloud of leaves around us, too thick to see through.