Bodies dropped to the ground around me as I constantly moved my arm, the Khopesh in my grasp creating beautiful, glittering arcs of deep crimson as the red metal and scarlet blood joined together to paint a picture of death and massacre as I waded through the sea of foes, cutting down those that stood between me and my objective.
Joining the red arcs was the flares of cyan light that erupted from my palm as I blasted monsters and Cultists alike with bursts of crystalline shards at insane speeds, ripping through their flesh and breaking their bones as the impact alone damaged their bodies, allowing the shards to deal more internal damage as they sliced on through into my enemies bodies.
So far, nothing was proving to be too much of a trouble for me, the only problem with the current situation being the never ending rush of bodies trying to push me to the ground and tear me apart, but besides that...
None were much of an individual threat, and while the sheer volume of enemies was problematic, it was yet another wonderful gift that fell onto my lap, the amount of experience I was gaining from them slowly but surely mounting to some insane number that would push me further along in terms of strength, which was something that I had a deep, insatiable craving for at this point.
Just a glance at the red skinned Demoness, who was grinning as she darted through the horde, cutting and cutting and cutting constantly as she wracked up more and more kills was enough to make me slightly angry, even more so when I noted that Jahi would occasionally glance at the woman too; not in the way that a comrade looks to check up on their fellow fighters, but instead like she was curious about the progress of Satanya.
That... just irked me, since I wanted to pull Jahi away from this silver tongued bitch as quickly as I could; just looking at her sent shivers down my spine and made my furs stand on end, my instincts telling me that she was just bad news all around.
For myself and - most importantly - for Jahi.
Also... for herself, since if I heard her utter yet another flirtatious line that suggested she didn't know her place, I was going to yank her tongue from her throat and strangle her with it...
But, I had to look back towards the cerulean portals as I inched ever closer to them, with Anput finally making her way to my side as my mate swung her long, yet thin bladed Odachi around in semi circles, using the length to tear through the various monsters that crowded around us, the giant katana covered in an extra layer of Metal Mana easily cutting through flesh and bone like paper and butter.
"What's the play here?"
Bashing in the skull of an Imp, I grunted as I had to dodge a flying kick of another Imp, though it paid for that mistake as I blasted off its legs, swiftly bringing my boot down onto its head as I killed two monsters in swift succession.
"I'm going to overload this portal and begin making my way towards the next. Hopefully the operators of these portals suffer a backlash!"
Trying to keep it short enough, Anput gave me a nod as she continued to stand her grand, the lithe Jackalkin clearing the area and silently ordering me to go ahead and do as I said, which made me smirk as I sheathed my Khopesh in the torso of a Cultist, releasing the blade and freeing my hands for what I was about to do.
Standing in front of the portal, I first erected a thick sheet of ice in front of it and prevented anything from coming out of it, before moving on to place my hands on either side of the ice and begin pouring my mana into the portal, locating the swirling runes that laid beneath its surface and tampering with them.
I learned quickly that the portals were actually spinning Ritual Circles that had a mirror like coating on their front to showcase where they were connected to, and those runes were exactly what I was looking for as I began to focus my mind, tuning out the fighting around me and placing my trust in my mate, who battled behind me.
Finding the runes that seemed the most important to the structure of the Ritual Circle was relatively easy, since my guesswork on what made this thing tick was entirely based on my own knowledge on how ancient magics worked... which was zilch.
Some of the runes were completely foreign to me - roughly a third of them - whilst another third were combination runes that had a familiar feeling but weren't quite things that I understood, whilst the last third were runes I was extremely comfortable in... and were the least important runes to the structure.
Picking out a few from the few dozen inside the Ritual Circle, I permeated them in my own mana and began to overload them with power, which led to the person channeling their own power into this portal to increase their output as well, trying to keep up with the influx of mana and prevent it from being destroyed.
Sadly for them, I had a large reservoir of mana to utilize for myself, and this battle between us was brought to a relatively quick conclusion as they retracted their mana before it could get any worse, resulting in the mirror surface rippling before disappearing completely.
I pulled out of the Ritual Circle and nodded as I watched it shrink before vanishing, instantly reaching for a mana potion and drinking down half the vial as I replenished my Core.
When I was done, I grabbed my Khopesh and wrenched it free from the Cultists corpse, watching the blood splash around me for a moment before I turned to Anput, saying "Let's get going to the next one, on the right!"