Chapter 40: Chapter 34

A beam of crimson light left King’s arm, evaporating water that came into being before the blue wyrm’s snout. Ivar hovered in the air, his wings flapping from time to time, keeping his massive legs from touching the bloodstained ground. His arms were folded across his chest, and he looked at King through half-closed eyes, giving him an uncanny resemblance to a bored medic dissecting a diseased patient. His tail moved, taking the communicator off his head and hiding behind his body. The thing was somewhat hard to replace for a being of his size.

The surroundings around King turned into a raging tsunami when water came from below the ground, pouring up in a torrent of dirt mixed with bodies, stone, and rock. Ivar’s control over the water was immense, yet the greatest danger behind his power was the precision with which he was wielding it. The deceased bodies of the reclaimers were washed to the side of the square, meanwhile King was bombarded with torrents of water that carried the dead of his side.

King moved both arms before himself, pressing armored gauntlets against each other. His whole figure became a bright pillar of light, and the pumping engine behind his back started working even faster. The burning robes were torn away from his bulk, and a crimson circle spread around him. The edges of this circle came into contact with the roaring water, evaporating both the water and the remains of dead bodies.

"This dance won’t be led by you. I will be the only one to write the history," King said, standing fully unharmed while the circle kept water from reaching him. The energy from King’s body flowed into his hands. He slowly moved his arms to the side, and a crimson ball of energy appeared before his gauntlets, slowly expanding in size while King kept moving his arms. His figure and the water around him soon became bathed in a dark crimson light that was coming from the orb, bright enough to push back the blue light in the wyrm’s eyes as well, "Let us start the farewell orchestra."

"I dislike classical music. Heavy rock is where you can hear the beating heart of creation and destruction. Here, let me give you a sample by turning you into a drum." Ivar responded, quickly flapping his wings.

King looked up just in time to see water bullets that appeared above him. Droplets of water, the size of a human body, charged toward King at the speed of a bullet. The first one crushed against his armored form, pushing the enemy leader back. The rest soon followed, hiding the enemy from the eyes of others as the ground around him exploded, sending upward dust and stone soaked in water. Water, the precious substance across all the Ravaged Lands, was created and used without any care by the captain of the Third Army. Water, something so much needed to live, is now used as a means to sniff out the life of a living being.

Logically, the simplest solution at this point would be to flood the entire city block and bury the enemies beneath the pressure of his power. Even the wonderous power armor of King would be no match for his unrestricted power. However, this would undoubtedly cause losses among both civilians and his allies, for when he wielded his power to its fullest, his control would often slip. A tsunami is a natural disaster that does not discriminate after all. And Ivar owed his freedom and life to Ravager. Many called him a cold person, and they were right, but never in his life had he ever abandoned his obligations. Allow the future to play out as it will, but he will ensure the prosperity of both the state and the Wolf Tribe. A more… restrained approach was needed to eliminate the obstacle before him.

Ivar calmly looked down at the battlefield, his eyes easily pierced through the shroud made of dust and stone. Not a single hint of surprise was in his eyes when crimson energy beams sliced through the dust, aimed at his neck. He willed a water shield into existence before King could point his arms at him, allowing energy to dissipate itself across the water surface, hiding Ivar behind a cloud of steam.

The blue wyrm’s ears caught the screaming sound of bone moving through the air. He moved one pupil and saw bone shards flying towards the buildings in the south, aimed squarely at the piece of flesh he had the misfortune of bringing into this world. His lips twitched in an anger and a wall of water came roaring up, absorbing the bones. This idiot doesn’t pull her weight. He thought about Aranea. Scorpio was right, they should have squeezed everything out of her, for the sake of others if nothing else. Fearing one’s power was stupid. Unfortunately, he was now bound by an obligation. He will simply have to live with his mistake.

Ivar wasn’t sure why he kept saving the scout, and this irked him. By now, she was of no use to him, just another face among the soldiers. As a captain, it was his duty to keep as many soldiers under his command alive as possible, but right now he had his own duel and distractions could cost him. Maybe he simply wanted to deny the enemy the pleasure of bringing more harm to the cause? Irrelevant. Back to the killing then.

He gasped for air and nearly fell on the ground when his wings no longer found the oxygen to hold him, halting the fall at the very last moment by covering every inch of his body with a thin layer of water and forcing himself into the air through manipulation of water. His lungs were on fire, all sounds, even the bubbling of water, were gone, leaving him in a world devoid of sound. He glanced to the side and saw the wolf hag saying something to Chort, but his keen ears failed to catch even a sound. So, this phenomenon was focused only on him and perhaps King.

This calmed Ivar, who already summarized what had happened, even before he saw King advancing on him. Vacuum. King not only dug out devices to make a spatial hole in space or a weapon to fell a warlord, however faulty this weapon was, but he also got his greedy hands on a device that removed all oxygen from a limited range. Fool. Wyrms were built differently. Normies and even some of the new breeds would pass out in fifteen to forty seconds while locked in an absolute vacuum. Wyrms, on the other hand, could survive in the cold space of the cosmos itself. Not for long, but for an hour he will be fine.

Heat was another matter. A vacuum is an excellent insulator, and in the heat of the Ravaged Lands, even his body could suffer a heatstroke if he was locked in combat for a long time with no ability to expunge the heat out of his body. To some point it could be negated by the water that he can create, but a wyrm’s body is a furnace on its own. The amount of heat they released into the atmosphere was impressive, even Ophelia had to use her power to keep herself safe while she and Scorpio were engaged in lovers' games.

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No matter. Ivar decided, deflecting a laser coming from King with a water wall. He applauded the weapon of choice of his enemy, the energy beams were both a viable weapon and a means to heat his body even more. In this situation, a temporary retreat might be wise, but undoubtedly, right now someone is filming their combat. King was not as foolish as to believe that he could defeat someone as great as Ivar. But if the wyrm retreats…

A crimson line came from the south, hitting King in the vambrace and attracting Ivar’s attention there. He saw an orb of pure white and willed into existence a droplet of water. King, too busy sending wave after wave of energy at Ivar, noticed a small drop of water on his vambrace a moment too late. Oceandeep came into effect, collapsing the orb.

Ivar heard a boom of sound, when air once more moved into an area devoid of oxygen. The sounds of the cracking of stone, the burning of flames in the palace… What?

"Da… Old demon, are you…" An annoyingly familiar voice came from the communicator behind Ivar’s back.

"This is captain Ivar for you, scout Leila," Ivar said, frowning at King's attempt to put distance between them. "Concentrate on your task and support your commanding officer. I had the situation under control. Your intervention was neither needed nor wanted."

He felt a tingle of anger. Ivar tried his best to raise the lump of flesh he and the dearest had accidently created into a proper servant of the state. He was cruel but to the point, for pain was an excellent motivator for a person to become better. Alas, Leila had chosen to remain incorrigible. Now she will be just another face among others, famous only because of her heritage as a wyrm. The fact that she decided that he was in peril only proved her mediocrity. It would have taken him less than a moment to notice the obvious target.

The blue wyrm made a single snap with the clawed fingers of his left hand, still keeping his arms folded.

Rivers of water flowed forward, aiming to surround the enemy, to cover it fully and crush it with pressure. Following the will of Ivar, small orbs appeared in the air, unleashing streams of concentrated water capable of slicing through tank armor plating, at King. The enemy spread his arms wide, using whatever technology he dug out from the ancient laboratories to wield the energy that evaporated the incoming attack. Ivar looked at him through the wall of water before him, calmly planning another assault. King’s armor already bore signs of damage, Oceandeep failed to envelop him fully, but he used the partial effect of the water pressure on several armor plates of the enemy, nonetheless, creating wide cracks around the armor before the water evaporated. One of his gilded horns was missing, destroyed amidst the water barrage. If King wants to try and match him in a war of attrition, so be it, Ivar will not allow himself to be distracted.

"Are you sure that you have time to keep this on?" King guessed Ivar’s thoughts and energy had burst forward from his body, turning the wall of water before Ivar into steam and forcing the wyrm to fly up to keep himself safe, "If you keep fighting me, you may as well lose both the city and your army, in addition to your allies…"

Is he a fool or a genius? Ivar asked himself, flapping his wings and creating a sphere of water the size of a bus over King. Not deeming him worthy of responding, he sent the sphere downward at the enemy, only for it to explode before streaks of crimson energy shot from the King’s armor. Ivar’s eyes caught the sight of shells coming down on the incoming enemy hover tanks. King saw it too, pointing one arm and creating a ball of energy before his gauntlet. He made a throwing gesture, sending a small orb above his allies, where it expanded into a disk of energy that protected the hover tanks.

"Even now, you're wasting your time, trying to claim by force what you can never claim by right," King's voice boomed, and he moved toward Ivar, dismissively smashing aside a wall of water with an energy beam. "Look around you! One of your warlords is already dead, and another is about to follow. Your army is trapped, and your allies..." He pointed to the battleground where wolf hag Aranea faced Chort.

"Foolishness," Ivar cut him off, not bothering to turn his head, "Your trap is in ruins, and you lay bare before me, ripe to be devoured. As for my allies, they are far more numerous than pest like you can even hope to guess."

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