"Summon—Brambleback!"
With a surge of fiery energy, another blazing beast emerged. Now with two Bramblebacks, Rhodes had them both lunge at the ice-covered monster conjured by Rustyrose's imagination.
Despite the powerful support of his Blue buff, maintaining two Bramblebacks and a Blue Sentinel at once was pushing Rhode's mana reserves dangerously low. His expression tightened. The burn rate was unsustainable.
The good news? The ice monster seemed particularly vulnerable to fire. Between the Bramblebacks' relentless strikes, it wouldn't last much longer.
But that raised a far more troubling question.
How many more can this guy summon?
Rhodes couldn't afford to let this drag out forever. He narrowed his eyes, trying to decipher Rustyrose's magic. "Hey... are you using Molding Magic?"
The more Rhodes observed him, the more he noticed a faint resemblance to Gray's and Laki's styles. They shaped magic into objects, Gray using ice, Laki using wood.
'Could this guy be using something similar?'
Rustyrose gave a soft, haughty laugh. "Molding Magic? How unimaginative of you." He tossed his silver hair over his shoulder with a dramatic flair.
"My magic is nothing so mundane. It is a Lost Magic, closer to the source of all magic itself. I wield the Arc of Embodiment."
He extended his arms with flourish, shadows swirling like silk ribbons around him. "Everything I imagine can take form. Even if it lacks elegance... or beauty."
As if to prove his point, dozens of weapons began appearing in midair, artillery cannons, turret launchers, and missile tubes of every grotesque shape and size. Their black, hollow barrels gleamed with magical light.
Rhode's stomach dropped.
"This crude, unrefined form of my power is not to my liking..." Rustyrose said smoothly. "But every now and then—"
"—I do enjoy a little firework display to mark someone's funeral."
Dozens of magical cannons roared to life, hurling magical projectiles in a colorful, deadly barrage. Explosions rocked the battlefield as several of Rhode's summoned beasts were hit mid-battle. Under the relentless blasts, their forms flickered, then burst apart into shimmering light.
Even the Blue Sentinel and the Bramblebacks couldn't hold out forever.
But Rhodes wasn't caught unprepared.
Before the creatures could be fatally destroyed, he dismissed them, vanishing them back to the rift. In their final moments, the Blue Sentinel renewed Rhode's Blue buff, and the Bramblebacks layered him with another Red buff, just in case.
As the battlefield cleared, the cannons began to turn, this time, directly toward him.
Rustyrose raised a single arm like a conductor before a symphony.
"Vanish, you pitiful little sprite... in the brilliant music of my farewell salute!"
Cannons fired again, dozens of magical salvos streaking through the air like falling stars.
Just before the blasts hit, he dove beneath the battlefield by taking over Krug.
Rhodes, still operating with a cautious mindset, summoned his remaining group of Krugs and sent them burrowing underground as a hidden flank.
They didn't descend quickly enough, so one of the cannon shells clipped them during the retreat. Fortunately, it wasn't a direct hit, just minor damage, nothing serious.
Basic physics reminded him: sound travels well through solids.
So, even buried deep beneath the earth, Rhodes could hear the rumbling cannonfire above. It filled the underground with muffled thunder, and also a twinge of envy.
"If I had a magic like Arc of Embodiment," he mused to himself, "I'd be able to conjure Infinite Blades or an entire Mechanical Legion in no time."
"Focus," he told himself, clearing the ridiculous visual from his head. "This kind of magic must have a limit. Even if he calls it superior to molding magic, the two can't be that different."
Since he didn't have much information about the Arc of Embodiment, he decided to treat it like a specialized form of molding magic and strategize accordingly.
After all, thanks to his time with Laki and Gray, Rhodes had a solid grasp of molding magic fundamentals.
The key limitation, aside from mana cost, is that molding magic relies on a deep understanding of the subject being shaped. Without that, the caster can only create shallow, superficial copies.
That would explain why Rustyrose could instantly summon the four guardian beasts, they were likely creations he had visualized over and over again, possibly even practiced hundreds of times. He knew them inside and out.
"He won't be able to copy my summons," Rhodes whispered to himself. "Not unless he knows them as well as I do. And he doesn't."
That, at least, was a reassuring thought.
But before Rhodes could consider the next move, the cannon barrage stopped.
His instincts flared.
He immediately shifted positions underground, "swimming" through the soil like a mole using the Krugs' tunneling technique.
An enormous iron spike, at least three meters tall, slammed into the exact spot he'd just vacated, splitting the ground wide open.
A beat too late, and he would've been skewered like a kebab.
"I hope you'll vanish into the other side of the abyss, rather than cowering underground!"
With a flourish, Rustyrose swung his right hand downward. In an instant, his arm warped, stretching forward unnaturally and transforming into a jagged, black claw. It shot out like a spear, piercing straight through Rhode's chest.
"Ghh—!" Rhodes gasped, caught completely off guard. He'd barely had time to react, and despite reinforcing his body with his Krug transformation, the tough armor-like shell crumpled like parchment against the force of that claw.
Blood splattered. A deep gash carved across his arm, and a gaping hole opened in his left shoulder.
Rustyrose's dramatic incantation came a beat too late.
"I am the King of the Underworld, my right hand, the obsidian blade that cuts through all things!"
Rhodes gritted his teeth. "What a load of melodramatic nonsense..."
But he didn't retreat.
Instead, he seized the monstrous black arm with both hands, tightening his grip despite the searing pain.
If the enemy was going to gift-wrap a limb and serve it up, Rhodes wasn't about to let it go to waste.
A bright flash of light burst from Rhode's body as he activated a form he'd never dared use in real combat.
His skin turned a sickly purplish-brown. His legs thickened grotesquely, his arms bulged with tumor-like bumps the size of a baby's fist, and his jaw swelled like an over-inflated balloon.
His eyes puffed up, dark rings of purple forming beneath them. His hair twisted into dreadlocks, adorned with small, poisonous mushroom-shaped accessories.
This transformation was one Rhodes had always considered too hideous to show anyone, not even his closest friends. He had practiced it in secret, disgusted with the look, but impressed with its power.
Today, Rustyrose had made the mistake of hurting him with his bare hands.
So now, Rhode's entire body exuded venom.
From head to toe, he was toxic.
The arm he clung to was already smoking where it touched his poisoned skin, and the dark claws that had impaled him were hissing and melting from contact with his blood.
Rhode's swollen cheeks contracted, and then puffed up like balloons. His jaw distended, and from his grotesque toad-like mouth, he spat a blast of dark purple sludge, arcing it straight toward Rustyrose like a venomous water jet.
"In my left hand, a golden shield that deflects all harm!"
A radiant shield appeared before Rustyrose, catching the spray of poison midair.
Smoke billowed from the point of contact. The golden shield sizzled, rapidly corroding under the toxic spray. The acidic poison wasn't just poisonous, it was laced with a strange fire, burning through the shield like acid through cloth.
"Arghhh!" Rustyrose cried out as the feedback of his own magic rebounded through his body. The obsidian sword-arm and golden shield vanished, his arm reverting back to flesh.
His sleeve was torn, skin blistered and charred where the toxin had touched it.
Rhodes, still holding his grotesque toad form, gave a heavy wheeze and asked with narrowed eyes:
"Oh? So it really wasn't molding magic. That claw and shield just now, were they real? Not constructs, but physical?"
Rustyrose didn't answer. Instead, a pair of shining springs materialized beside him, washing the poison from his scorched arm.
But even as the water cleansed the surface, his arm trembled from the lingering sting.
Clutching his wrist, Rustyrose adjusted his crooked glasses with a shaking hand.
"How unsightly. An abomination like you deserves only one home, the deepest pit of the underworld!"
Rhodes snorted through his bloated cheeks.
This guy really wouldn't drop the act.
"Featherstorm Barrage!" he shouted.
Above, his Raptor summon, now rested, released another volley of blazing crimson feather blades.
Rustyrose instinctively summoned his winged boots to leap, but the moment his feet tensed—
Something clamped down around his ankles.