A silent, invisible ripple of pure psychic force shot across the valley. It bypassed the physical chaos of the swarming ants and warring lackeys entirely, slamming directly into the Great Badger’s mind like a metaphysical sledgehammer.
In the center of the crater, the massive mammal suddenly staggered. Its glowing eyes rolled back in its skull, its massive front paws faltering mid-step just as it prepared to hurl another boulder into the sky. The dense, yellow earth-essence that coated its fur flickered erratically.
It was a momentary distraction, a fleeting lapse in its impenetrable defense. But against an apex predator with flawless hunting instincts, one second was a fatal eternity.
The Lord Dreadwing capitalized instantly.
It folded its four crystalline wings and dropped from the clouds like a sapphire guillotine. It didn’t bother spitting its acid. It aimed its massive, razor-sharp front legs directly at the Badger’s momentarily unprotected neck.
SQUELCH-CRACK!
The impact was devastating. The Dreadwing’s biological blades sheared through the thick muscle, glancing heavily off the Badger’s colossal, reinforced spine. A geyser of hot, crimson blood erupted into the air, raining down on the rusted-red ants swarming around their feet.
The Dreadwing immediately flared its wings, preparing to launch itself back into the safety of the sky.
But it had underestimated the sheer, apocalyptic tenacity of the Great Badger. And as Sol had anticipated.
The horrific, fatal injury didn’t kill the mammal. Instead, it triggered a primal, berserker failsafe deeply embedded within its Omen-Bloodline. The Badger didn’t fall. It planted its feet into the bedrock and let out a roar that physically shattered the remaining petrified roots in the valley.
The air pressure violently dropped.
BOOM!
A blinding pillar of thick, yellow earth-essence erupted from the Badger’s body. The sheer volume of primal energy was so overwhelmingly dense that it materialized into a physical manifestation. A colossal, translucent phantom outline of a Badger... easily twice the size of the physical beast, glowing with raw, unadulterated tectonic power... manifested around it like a suit of ethereal armor.
Its physical claws extended, encased in the glowing, white-hot phantom essence. Its defense skyrocketed to an absurd, impenetrable degree, the phantom outline absorbing the ambient essence of the earth itself to stitch its bleeding neck together.
It was the Badger’s absolute, final stand. It was burning its very essence for a burst of supreme, untouchable power.
"Perfect," Sol breathed, a cold sweat breaking out on his forehead as he witnessed the terrifying transformation. The Dreadwing had landed the fatal blow, but now the Badger was a walking nuke with nothing to lose.
If he let the Dreadwing escape back into the sky, the Badger would eventually bleed out, and the insect would win.
"Time to switch targets," Sol muttered, his eyes tracking the Dreadwing as it frantically beat its wings to gain altitude.
He fired a second, razor-sharp command down the silver tether to the Queen.
Focus on the Dreadwing! Full power! Stun it! Do not let it fly!
The Dreadwing was pulling up from its devastating strike, its crystalline wings blurring as it tried to regain altitude to escape the Badger’s berserker phase. It was moving at super speeds, relying entirely on its flawless aerodynamics and microscopic visual processing.
The Queen’s mental blast slammed into the giant insect’s neural cluster.
At super speed, even a fraction of a millisecond of neurological stutter is catastrophic. The Dreadwing’s thirty thousand compound lenses flared blindly. The complex, perfectly synchronized rhythm of its four wings violently lost the perfect rhythm.
The massive sapphire insect stalled violently mid-air.
It didn’t plummet to the ground, but it lost all its upward momentum, hovering dazed, disoriented, and entirely vulnerable just forty feet above the ground.
The Great Badger, encased in its towering, yellow phantom armor, didn’t hesitate for a microsecond. Driven by pure, unadulterated rage and the burning fuel of its own essence, it reared up on its hind legs. The phantom outline mimicked its movements, transforming the beast into a sixty-foot-tall titan of essence.
It slammed its glowing, oversized phantom claws directly into the stalled insect.
The impact sounded like a mountain collapsing. The sheer kinetic force of the Badger’s strike bypassed the Dreadwing’s iridescent sapphire armor entirely, cracking its exoskeleton and violently crushing its lower thorax.
The Dreadwing shrieked... a high-pitched, mechanical scream of pure agony that shattered the eardrums of the lackeys battling below. The giant dragonfly was swatted from the sky, crashing into the muddy, blood-soaked earth with the force of a falling meteor, sending a shockwave of dirt and crushed ants flying in every direction.
The Great Badger immediately dropped to all fours, the ground shattering beneath its weight, and charged the grounded insect, intending to tear its delicate, crystalline wings from its body and crush its head.
Sol watched, his breath caught in his throat. The plan had worked flawlessly. The Dreadwing was gravely injured, its primary advantage... its speed... completely neutralized. The Badger was doing exactly what Sol needed it to do: beating his future loot drop to the brink of death.
But the Lord Dreadwing was an apex predator of the Great Orrath. It was a Layer 3 Sovereign. It had ruled the skies, and it was not going to die quietly in the mud at the hands of a grounded mammal.
As the colossal, phantom-buffed Badger lunged forward for the killing blow, its massive jaws opening wide, the gravely injured Dreadwing violently twisted its crushed thorax.
Its multifaceted eyes blazed with a terrifying, toxic inner light. It didn’t try to fly. It didn’t try to dodge. Cornered, crippled, and facing absolute annihilation, the Lord Dreadwing didn’t hold back. It abandoned all preservation instincts and tapped directly into its own essence.
It unleashed its absolute, full power, preparing to meet the Badger’s phantom assault with a catastrophic counterattack of its own.
First of all, it bypassed its biological limits and weaponized the absolute entirety of its hyper-concentrated acid reserves.
Its multifaceted eyes blazed with a terrifying, toxic inner light. Its massive mandibles unhinged, and it unleashed a point-blank volcanic eruption of neon-green death directly into the Great Badger.