The moment Jean poured raw mana into her spell array, the entire world seemed to freeze for a breath.

Then, the sky ignited.

Hundreds of beams, orbs, and runic constructs shot forward in a psychedelic cascade, each bursting with elemental power. Flames roared in vibrant streaks, arcs of lightning crackled through the air, and flickers of gravity magic tugged at the atmosphere, sending swirling vortexes of wind spinning off in all directions.

Across the battlefield, spectators on both sides recoiled, shielding their eyes from the blinding spectacle. For the citizens of Treon, gazing upward from the relative safety of the ramparts, the whole scene must have appeared like a mad display of magic—an overwhelming, continuous explosion of shimmering lights, each dancing high above the raging river.

Despite being protected by the wards, most still took care to fall back into a building. Instinctive knowledge drove them, as while their minds struggled to understand how such a display of power could be possible, their lizard brains knew very well that survival had to take priority.

To Jean, however, every spell was as precise as a scalpel and as familiar as her own pulse. She perceived them all through the expanded clarity of her multi-threaded mind, one that parsed countless arcs of mana simultaneously, weaving and adapting them on the fly.

Subspells and layered enhancements combined with meta-magic principles infused new power into each volley, allowing her to direct even the smallest cutting curse. Elemental forces soared across the night sky, painting the darkness with broad, violent strokes.

Amid the chaos, Duke Garva became a silver blur. Even when hammered by the barrage, he moved with a martial grace that few men alive could claim. His aura shimmered around him, forming a protective dome, which he enhanced with agile swordsmanship.

Every slash of his blade dispersed incoming spells in vivid sprays of sparks. An onlooker might even call it beautiful—if the clash of titanic might weren't so deadly.

Even to Jean's eyes, it was impressive how Garva not only managed to evade many of her attacks but also faced some head-on without crumpling. She recognized the signs of powerful body reinforcement as his life force swirled about his limbs and torso in patterns even more advanced than most high-rank Paladins could craft. His eyes glinted in the unearthly light, and the lines of his face were etched with sheer, unyielding focus.

If he closes in… the thought flickered through her mind. I won't stand a chance in direct melee. She had enough raw power to fight him, but his physical advantage with a blade in hand could be lethal. A single slip might spell her end.

Fortunately, she had no intention to let him get that close.

Doubling down, she channeled more streams of mana into the swirling sea of circles above. Thousands of new spells emerged from the mosaic of runes. Some were small curses intended to target Garva's joints, hinder his breathing, or weigh down his limbs. Others were large area-of-effect blasts, distorting gravity so that pockets of space pressed in on him with crushing force. The rainbow of magical onslaught thickened into a solid wall of destruction.

A lesser foe might have perished in the first second under such a punishing salvo. But Duke Garva was no lesser foe. He cut through incoming spells with great swings of his sword, parting her magic like an invisible wedge. When curses flared against his aura, they fizzled away before fully taking hold. If one managed to seep through, he shrugged it off, forging ahead.

Yet it was not without cost. As Jean's barrage intensified, Garva's steps slowed. His lifeforce aura crackled with strain, battered by kinetic blasts. Sometimes, a wave of freezing wind forced him to spend precious moments warming his limbs with mana. He summoned more protective shields from some amulet he wore, but they were ephemeral at best, wholly outclassed by Jean's layered attacks.

Refusing to give him a moment to breathe, Jean summoned even more. She had prepared for days—no, weeks—for the possibility of confronting a Champion-tier fighter, carefully storing arcs of mana in specialized glyphs around Treon. Most of that had been useless against the Void Mage, but now, she could unleash her full might.

With a single mental prompt, she tapped into that reservoir of potential. The wards over the city also lent her a fraction of their power, guided by the clever runes she had sketched in hidden corners of the architecture. That synergy provided her with an almost inexhaustible channel of magic.

The sky roared anew. This time, entire spheres of pulsating energy materialized directly around the Duke. Some ignited into coruscating storms of electricity; others turned the air itself into poison. He retreated with mounting urgency.

Down below, the Great Slitherer foamed, still roiling in the aftermath of the water elementals' assault. Jean's peripheral senses picked up battered ships listing or sinking, as surviving sailors either dove overboard or tried to cling to scraps of floating timber.

With the blockade effectively demolished, the revolutionaries on Treon's ramparts began to cheer. However, some watched in fearful awe, not wanting to celebrate too soon, given that the Duke of Garva remained in the fight.

Love what you're reading? Discover and support the author on the platform they originally published on.

Garva's answer finally came in a concentrated flash of silver. Gathering every ounce of his aura, he unleashed a beam that blasted a straight corridor through Jean's swirl of spells, smashing into the prismatic shield she'd set up around her.

Such an attack, however, wasn't meant to kill her. A path opened, momentarily free of the chaotic barrage, and he crouched, preparing to charge through.

So he still had some trick up his sleeve. A technique meant to carve through offensive mana… Did he just invent it on the spot?

Jean had anticipated he might try to bring the fight to her. A single flick of her wrist triggered the next wave of spells, finally activating her hidden reserve. A million spells she had prepared, and so far, less than thirty thousand had been used. Now, the rest are activated all at once.

No other mage alive could juggle such quantity without collapsing from mental strain. Jean was sure of that. Yet she had spent years honing her technique for dividing her attention, weaving multiple thought streams so that each aspect of the barrage functioned like an independent mind.

Then came the metamagic. Cloaked her incantations were spells to alter other spells, rewriting their structure mid-flight. If Garva cut through one wave, she adapted, bending the mana around his blade and forcing him to meet fresh patterns. A curse that had fizzled a moment prior might reappear in a different form, coalescing behind him or striking him from below in the shape of a gravity well. From the outside, it appeared as pure chaos, but to Jean, it was a carefully orchestrated symphony.

Even so, Garva tried to carve a path. His silver aura flared again, and Jean saw jagged cracks in the air where his blade struck. The corridor he had forged did not instantly collapse, his warrior's willpower fueling the technique. He took a leap forward, then another.

But the unstoppable wave of new spells battered him from all sides. Jean's barrage was no longer a mere hailstorm—it was a hurricane of mana.

From the vantage of those in Treon, the entire sky lit up in a series of overlapping explosions. Deafening thunder rolled across the city. The battered survivors among Garva's once-proud fleet stared in horror as their liege, the unstoppable champion, was forced backward. The color around him shifted from silver to red, then to golden, and back to silver again, each hue representing a new wave of magic or aura collision.

Jean's mind, working at hyper-speed, registered Garva using a final desperate gambit—an advanced armor spell. Thick plating materialized over his body, fusing with his aura, and she could feel the pressure it emitted even from a distance. "He's trying everything," she murmured with begrudging respect.

Still, it wasn't enough. He had retreated nearly a mile from his original position, pushed relentlessly back by the storm. At times, the bright silver glow around him flickered, revealing dents and tears in the ephemeral plating. Large welts of energy crackled across the Duke's broad figure. Jean could see it: the unstoppable champion was starting to break.

That was her cue.

She inhaled deeply, letting her will surge forth. The lines of Treon's wards shimmered in her peripheral vision, responding to her command. She seized them, along with the raw swirling magic in the air, forging them into a single, unifying Work of True Magic.

In one moment, she twisted that power upon itself. Runes and circles collapsed together, merging into a shapeless mass of glowing mana above the battlefield. The shift was so abrupt that even Garva paused in confusion, his blade raised warily. The hundreds of thousands of separate spells she had conjured wove themselves into a single monstrous presence. The air, already saturated with magic, howled in protest as the new shape asserted itself.

Jean's heart pounded, and she knew she was hitting the limits of her ability, even after months of effort to prepare this singular spell. Such a technique was close to the domain of the gods—a mastery of synergy and adaptation that dwarfed any typical "ultimate" collective magic. It was beyond Champion territory. It could only be called "Ascended."

The swirling could of power began to condense, coalescing into something massive. At first, it shimmered like an amorphous cloud, then limbs emerged, wings, eyes, fractal halos. A colossal silhouette loomed over the battered river: an angelic form, though not the serene figure seen in children's tales. It was an angel true to the oldest tales, with rings of eyes orbiting a central body of blinding radiance. Multiple feathered wings, each of them composed of pure starlight, extended across the sky.

Below, the waters of the Great Slitherer frothed violently. The air itself seemed to weep under the entity's presence. Treon's populace, both friend and foe, could only gape as that luminous being manifested overhead. An unearthly choir of magic thrummed through the atmosphere, a subsonic hum that rattled bones and set hearts pounding.

Jean gazed at her creation with satisfaction. She had never resorted to this level of magic in any previous conflict, partly due to the toll it demanded from her and partly because she believed that certain lines should not be crossed unless absolutely necessary. But with Duke Garva threatening everything she and her comrades had built, the moment had arrived.

An odd silence followed. Even the waves seemed to calm for a single moment.

Then Jean issued a simple mental command, and the angel moved. Wings of light beat once, sending shockwaves of pressured air outward. Eyes, dozens of them, turned simultaneously to focus on the Duke. The swirling rings around its head shimmered with raw destructive potential.

Garva raised his silver sword in defiance, every muscle tense. His aura flared, and the battered plating around him hummed in resonance. He looked like a cornered lion preparing for a final stand. Perhaps he believed that if he put everything he had on the line, he could break free.

It was pure foolishness. No mortal could face It.

The angel attacked. It didn't cast a spell or use a skill. Instead, an impossibly bright lance of power materialized just because it intended to destroy the enemy.

It was over in an instant.

The beam skewered Garva's silver aura, cracking it like a thin pane of ice. The second strike came from above as the angel took offense to his defiance, and a bolt of pure Light struck him, vaporizing his armor. Garva shouted, trying to muster a final riposte—but the third blow hit too fast, and a wave of pure light enveloped him.

And with that, Duke Garva was gone. Obliterated in a burst of Light that lingered like afterimages in the retinas of those who dared to watch.

Jean felt the moment of his demise reverberate in the mana around her as a final chord struck on a grand cosmic instrument. The air shuddered, then fell into a profound silence. The angelic construct hovered for a brief instant, rings still spinning, then dissolved gracefully into the void. Countless motes of leftover mana drifted away, leaving the sky quiet and star-strewn.

Few ships remained afloat, and those that did were entirely out of position, scattered by the water elementals' earlier wrath.

Jean released a long breath, letting the massive store of borrowed mana slip from her control. A bone-deep fatigue set in. Even her extraordinary mind and body felt the drain of such an act, but she held steady, floating in the air a moment longer to ensure no threat remained.

The waters of the Great Slitherer sloshed gently beneath her. A hush lingered over Treon's walls, broken only by the ragged cheering that started in pockets, then grew into a swelling roar.

The Siege of Treon ended. Their greatest foe on this battlefield—one of the kingdom's mightiest champions—had been obliterated. The blockade was gone, the city saved.

Jean allowed herself a weary, feral grin. She'd paid dearly in energy, but the Revolution would remember this day forever. Lowering her arms, she glided back toward Treon.

"Let them know," she whispered under her breath, though no one could hear. "No matter how powerful they think they are, the new world we build will be stronger still."

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.