Chapter 227: Chapter Two Hundred Twenty Eight

Mel had paid WAY more attention to us than I had expected. Not enough  to know we were spies, but in a way that was even more impressive. She  hadn't known we were special or anything, she had just watched us  closely because we were part of the Pavilion. We were her people, and  she looked out for her own the only way she knew how. Helping them get  stronger. If we hadn't come clean already the whole thing would have  made me feel like a giant asshole. Luckily we had, so I didn't have any  distractions from her strategies for deploying us.

Not  that it would have mattered. They were more straightforward than  expected, but they were also highly efficient and shockingly intuitive  for what we could do. The basic breakdown of what she wanted from us was  pretty simple. Firstly she wanted us far away from either of the  enemies, avoiding direct conflict. As skilled and talented as we were,  we didn't have the raw stats to keep up with people like Beat and Sever  aside from short bursts from Skill powerups.

In order to  counter that particular weakness Mel told us about a useful and  extremely powerful type of attack called an 'invocation'. An invocation  was, at its core, a group Skill. Sort of like a larger version of what  Callie and I had already been doing when we merged Skills. It was  apparently uncommon at lower levels because of the strain I had already  noticed and been using to train my own Skills. Something Mel called  'soul weight'.

Invocations had a ton of soul weight. More  than any of the Skills we had been using up to this point, and Mel made  it clear that even a three person invocation wouldn't be something any  of us would be able to bear. As I had already discovered, the ability to  resist soul weight was independent of stats or Skills, and Mel likened  it to training the soul as a muscle. Soul strength was an important part  of cultivation and became more so as we ranked up, but at the moment  even the training I had been doing didn't come close to enough.

Soul  strength increased naturally as we ranked up as well, the weight of our  Impact and other stats acting as a form of passive growth, but for any  abilities that crossed the rank gap, you needed to train it up ahead of  time, and it also made the rank up and Skill growth process easier.  Abel's soul strength was massive for his level, which was one of many  reasons he was such an absolute monster in combat. If you didn't have  enough soul strength to use a powerful Skill, even if you had the stats  and Skills to use it, your soul would collapse under the weight, similar  to the effects of ranking up with too many stats from elixirs.

I  was incredibly lucky I'd been training mine so consistently without  meaning to, otherwise that flame burst I'd used on the asshole with the  gas power would have straight up killed me. All this was to say that  while we could theoretically use an invocation to smash one of the  others, none of us could bear the soul weight to actually DO it. Luckily  Alden was old and had been in G-rank for decades or longer. His soul  strength was pretty substantial, and he agreed to support us in the  invocation so we could effectively use the combination of abilities in  the attack that Mel wanted.

The abilities she wanted us  using were...a doozy. The attack we were supposed to execute required  massive stacks of effort and Skill from all of us. From Callie, the  strongest shadow attack she could use, a massive sea of powerful shadow  blades, which I would be doubling up on by dumping in two of her stored  full power attacks (more would apparently be too much even for Alden).  From Benny, a triple damage, a density shift, and some of that cerebral  overclocking to let Callie maneuver them more easily.

Finally,  I was going to be putting in the most, even if most of it was  subskills. Mercy Kill, Consecration of Flame, Touch of Tears, Stone  Limb, and an Afterburner to top it all off. The raw power of the attack  we were cooking up would have pretty much flattened any of us, and Mel  said even she wouldn't have been able to bear the weight of it. Luckily  Alden had a soul strength second only to Abel, and he would be able to  keep it up for approximately thirty seconds. Thirty seconds for Callie  to attack with everything all three of us had.

Even for a  member of the Titan Twenty and someone whose stats were probably  multiple times what mine were, I was pretty sure this would be enough to  take them down. Or at least I hoped so. It also made me even more  determined to increase my soul strength as I had been. So much of the  fluidity in the system was down to the strength of the soul, and the  more I increased it the better I could use that. I was pretty sure I'd  even be able to manipulate stored attacks like they were my own if I got  it high enough, and that alone would be reason enough to do it.

The  process of the invocation wasn't complicated, surprisingly. What it WAS  was difficult, and it required a lot of trust. Much like I knew Callie  needed to let me work with her Skills and vice versa, in order to the  invocation we all needed to open up our power to each other completely.  It wasn't something you could just do with a stranger. It required a  level of implicit belief in another person that I wouldn't have had with  anyone but my team. Alden, who was just taking the weight on himself  rather than adding anything in, had less stringent requirements, and we  did trust the old man quite a bit for all the help and training, even if  not to the same extent.

We were lucky to have him with us  really. Using an invocation wasn't just a matter of being high ranked,  you needed someone with enough soul strength, and that amount changed  based on how much power was used. That meant you either needed someone  like Alden who was extremely powerful for his rank from long term  training, or you needed someone higher ranked to take the weight, which  kind of defeated the purpose since at that point they could just USE a  higher ranked Skill.

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The actual execution of the attack  just required physical contact and the use of all the Skills we'd picked  out. Each of us put a hand on Alden and funneled in the abilities we  needed to use. It wasn't exactly effortless. There was still some soul  weight on my side that I needed to bear  to mold the attacks into  something that could be shaped by Alden. Touch of tears wasn't naturally  made to be given to another person, and I hadn't finished the process  of altering that one to be usable easily by others, so I had to do that  manually.

Still, we managed to get all of it in place, and  Alden was able to bear it. We didn't sever the connection after that  though. Callie would be directing the actual attack with her Shadow  Manipulation Skill. Alden was just acting as the cauldron where we mixed  the ingredients so to speak. Knowing time was short, the bearded man  grunted when he was done, nodding to Callie. "Thirty seconds lass, can't  hold it longer, so make it count." His voice was rough with strain that  I recognized from my own attempts at Skill manipulation.

Callie  took a deep breath. "Got it. Let's do this." She triggered the  invocation, staring out past the wall of flame through a small hole Mel  had made in the barrier for us to use. With a focused effort she held  out a hand, unleashing...power. The result of the invocation was  staggering. A wave of magma infused darkness that almost seemed like a  forest of power snaking up from the ground surrounding the already  fading Shadow Swamp.

Mel had told us she was having the  most trouble with Sever. Beat's abilities weren't as effective a counter  against her flames, but Sever could cut through her defenses if he had  time to prepare, so it was our job to pin him down at the very least.  Once Mel finished Beat she would jump in, providing the other twin was  still alive at that point. Callie was supposed to go at him all out.  Thirty seconds wasn't really that long in the grand scheme of things,  but in a fight between people with our levels of Perception and Focus,  there was still a lot that could be done in that time.

The  magma shadows scythed through the air at Sever, aiming for several  vital points on his body and attacking with very little warning. Little  was apparently enough, however, because the masked blade user reacted  nearly instantly. His body nearly blurred as he flickered between stabs,  the red light on the edge of his knife parting the few that managed to  get close like an axe through tissue paper. The only thing that  prevented it from being a perfect evasion was the very last of the  Shadow Swamp. One of the dark tentacles had lashed around an ankle, and  while Sever had dispatched it quickly, it slowed him down enough for one  of the magma spears to graze his shoulder.

There  was a blaze of poison fire as the sleeve of his hoodie went up and his  non-knife hand flickered up to tear it free, tossing the burning fabric  away even as he exposed the smoldering gash in his arm. I saw his  knuckles grip his knife hilt harder as he turned to glare through the  flames right at us, but he was already in motion, dodging yet another  wave of poisonous magma spears aimed at his vital spots.

The  next twenty seconds or so were a blur of flashing lights and flickering  knives as Sever danced between the attacks. His Vitality was countering  the arm wound, but Callie managed to surprise him and score another on  his leg, which he cut free with his knife to save time so he didn't get  pincushioned while dealing with the injury. The longer it went on  though, the more certain I became that even with this invocation, we  wouldn't be able to finish this in time.

Mel  seemed to agree, because she waited until the last possible second and  then completely bypassed Beat to attack Sever while he was distracted  just as Callie was launching the last assault Alden could handle the  weight of. Beat dashed across the ring with a shout, desperately trying  to rescue his brother, but he needn't have bothered. As a wave of golden  fire smashed into Sever's location in the shape of a roaring flame  serpent a golden wall of gentle energy appeared in front of him,  soundlessly cancelling out the roaring flames, melting them like snow in  the sunshine.

Serenity  appeared next to the pair even as Abel's fist created a massive crater  in the ground where she'd been standing. Apparently the rabbit masked  warrior had been distracted by momentarily by the shout and given  Serenity an opening to regroup with the others. Abel took a step,  appearing next to Mel as he creating a fluid zone of space between the  two points, all but teleporting up to where his partner was standing. He  checked her over with concern, and the hand she laid on his face showed  better than any smile how much she adored him.

I  cleared my throat. "Sorry to interrupt the couple time guys, but they  seem to have grouped up, and I somehow doubt this is going to be the end  of it." Without letting on what I was doing I triggered a trip of heal  bursts, one each for Alden, Abel, and Mel, bringing our best back up to  not only peak efficiency, but beyond as they were infused with fresh  lifeforce to keep them going. Then I turned back to the enemy. I hadn't  been bullshitting just then. I didn't think this was over. Not by a long  shot.

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