2409 Broken Balance (Part 1)

'What the heck is going on here?' Nyka asked while unleashing a tier five Raging Sun from her body.

The mix of earth and fire generated a blast of violet flames and magma that freed the Vampire from the Trolls holding her.

'You've never fought monsters, did you?' Dawn chuckled.

'No time for riddles. I need answers!'

'Fine. Undead are the natural predators of the living, but then what about the unliving?' The Horseman replied. 'They are living masses of Decay in desperate need of nourishment and darkness element. Now, what are you?'

'A corpse reanimated by huge amounts of life force and darkness.' Nyka replied in horror.

'Don't forget how you undead can't even use the light element which is the bane of Trolls. Long story short, they are one link above you in the food chain. A single drop of your blood is worth hundreds of humans to all kinds of monsters plagued by Decay.

'Eating you will both sate their hunger and revert them to their unfallen state, even if just for a while.' Dawn telepathically nodded.

'That's why earlier you were so sure I would get bodied! You knew this would happen.' Nyka said in outrage.

'Just like I know that I, in turn, am their natural enemy. I'm comprised of light element that will further aggravate Decay and a single one of my heat rays can kill dozens of them. Mother made sure I am one link above Trolls to keep things balanced.'

'Tell me, smartass, did you predict that as well?' Nyka pointed at the Trolls who even with the Raging Sun eating at them refused to let go of her.

They had turned into a bunch of naked men and women of rare beauty with grey skin and four arms.

"Free at last!" One of them said, licking his lips in hunger. "Come, my siblings. There's still plenty to eat for everyone."

'Seriously, what the fuck is going on?' Dawn was flabbergasted. 'Trolls are supposed to be incapable of speaking and to act solely based on instinct. Yet these bastards are collaborating instead of competing for the food.'

'I'll take that as a no.' Nyka took her mace out of her dimensional amulet and smashed the reverted Trolls away before they drained more of her strength.

No tooth could pierce the Adamant of her armor yet the Trolls had managed to feed on her by mere contact. As a Vampire, she wasn't supposed to feel tired, just hungry. Yet so much of her vitality had been sucked away so quickly that she was panting.

"Don't let her run away!" A female reverted Troll said and her still-fallen comrades obeyed.

'Mindless creatures my undead ass. Do something!' Nyka was struck down by a barrage of tier three Light Mastery heat rays.

By consuming the excess light magic, the Trolls could limit the consumption of the darkness element needed to keep them stable and prolong their unfallen state.

'Okay, this is the last straw!' Teaching her host a lesson was one thing, but attacking Dawn with Light Mastery was an insult that she took up close and personal.

After switching bodies, the Horseman conjured a beam of focused light that cut through the ranks of Trolls surrounding her like a hot knife through butter. The heat of the energy blade set the monsters ablaze while part of the light element it was comprised of forced them to heal.

The regenerative process consumed what little energy the Trolls had drained from Nyka, returning them to their fallen state. Those who had no darkness energy, instead, burned to ashes as their bodies cannibalized themselves.

'You bastards might have caught me by surprise, but I'm still your natural predator!' Dawn unleashed a barrage of heat rays from all over her body as soon as she had finished conjuring her tier four spell, Sunshine.

Numbers meant nothing against energy blasts that pierced through their nearest target and moved on to the next until their mana was completely exhausted. The Trolls being so packed and working together worked against them, allowing Sunshine to hit more targets at the same time.

The area around the Horseman turned into a blazing inferno fueled by the corpses of the dead Trolls that piled up as she cut them down with her crystal sword and smashed them with the mace.

Each hit fed them light energy and pushed their cores out of balance again despite the huge amounts of darkness element the Trolls had stolen.

Their metabolism became flooded by Decay and their bodies dried up, becoming even more flammable. The smaller pieces they were cut into also burned more easily and faster than dry grass.

'See that, kid? You do it like th-' The one-sided slaughter was brought to a halt when Dawn felt her body weight increase by several folds.

Then, her feet sunk into the ground while countless tendrils of earth wrapped themselves around her limbs.

'What the heck is happening? Even if these Trolls are abnormal, they should be limited to light and darkness. It's because the evolved Odi failed to master the six elements that they resorted to Roghar. Where does earth magic come from?' She thought.

'From there!' Nyka pointed at the small and allegedly harmless Goblins that were spread throughout the enemy ranks.

The Vampire had noticed them thanks to her privileged position as a spectator and the fact that while Dawn was in control, she didn't have much to do but study the Horseman's strategy along with the enemy's.

A quick mind link showed Dawn how the mana moved from one Goblin to the next, stacking up until a simple chore magic spell turned into something more. From tier one to tier three and then into something that roughly resembled an array.

The Goblins lacked the mastery and the knowledge to pull something so refined but each one of them contributed to manipulating the collective mana with their respective willpower, creating the next best thing.

'Is it me or do those Goblins all have the same energy signature?' Dawn couldn't believe her own Life Vision and asked for Nyka's confirmation.

'They do and that's not all. They aren't just randomly spread. They have positioned themselves in the exact spots necessary to act as the focus points of a magical formation.' The Vampire traced a telepathic line between the Goblins that highlighted the magic circle they formed despite the chaos of battle.

A Goblin's mana core reached the bright orange at best, but by working together they achieved the prowess of a cyan core.

At the same time, Tista was noticing as well that the Trolls weren't burning as easily as she had expected.

'This is making no sense. I fought Trolls in the past and they were neither so resilient nor so well coordinated. I need to alert the others before Ne'sra's mages get slaughtered.' Even bursts of Origin Flames died out sooner than they were supposed to and the Trolls seemed to shield those next to them on purpose.

Tista was about to gain altitude and alert the others with her communication amulet when a second pseudo-arrays pulled her down. It was clumsy and too rough to overpower her flight spell once she focused on it, but she had no time to do that.