A wave of fire swept across the army, roasting the first few ranks alive. They did not survive, but even Incinerate wasn’t enough to destroy the entire force. Elijah had already killed a few via his biological bombs, but killing the army had never been the intention of that tactic. Instead, he’d only wanted to sow chaos, allowing him to destroy the boundary unfettered. And in that endeavor, he had been more than effective.

Yet, when he faced off against the gathered army, he realized that there were far too many that had made it through. Most were unscathed. Nearly a hundred thousand fighters – with various archetypes represented – was no small threat.

So, he’d scythed in, bathing the first ranks with Incinerate before retreating. He felt multiple debuffs slam into him, and yet, he managed to get out of range before the flames faded and the rest of the army could take advantage. Regrettably, they did not pursue.

Expected, but disappointing.

He didn’t stop running until he reached the trees. Only then did he halt long enough for the debuffs to recede. Seven minutes and change, so not nearly as long as when he’d crossed the active boundary. But still a problem. Once they faded, he retreated to a prepared location. The day before, he’d spent quite some time gathering giant boulders from the mountains. Each one was the limit of what he could carry in the Shape of the Sky, which meant that they weighed at least a ton each. Anything else would mitigate his speed and potential altitude.

Besides, a one-ton boulder was plenty big enough for what he had planned. And he had nearly fifty of them.

Without further hesitation, he shifted into his flight form, grabbed hold of the first boulder, then threw himself into the air. Or at least he tried to. The increased weight wouldn’t have been difficult to lift, but climbing into the air made it count all the more. Still, he’d tested things out. If they were too big, he would never have been able to move them from the mountains in the first place.

He flapped his wings with all his might, climbing and climbing until he was among the clouds. Then, he swept across the sky, covering the couple of miles to the encampment. When he was above the defensive formation, he released the boulder.

It fell with the force of a bomb, hitting the edge of the formation and sending a trickle of experience Elijah’s way. Not as much as he’d have liked, but he had long decided that it would be a battle of attrition. There would be no quick end to the conflict, even if he’d have preferred it.

They had too many counters to his abilities. So long as he kept up the pressure, varying his means of attack, they would stay on the back foot. Unbalanced enemies made mistakes and failed to prepare for changes in tactics. The second he let them anticipate his next move was when he’d fail.

Thankfully, they didn’t have much in the way of recourse against his boulders. They refused to send people to attack him, though they did spread out in an effort to mitigate each falling rock’s effect. It worked, too – evidence that his opponents were competent enough.

By the fiftieth, he was only killing a handful with each attack.

Yet, by the time he’d exhausted his supply, the enemy was weaker than when he’d begun. And that would have to be enough.

After that, he landed in the jungle and set about enacting the next part of his plan, which hinged on Eternal Plague. Creeping forward under the Guise of the Unseen, Elijah found a low rise behind which he could shelter. From their position within the camp, they couldn’t see him, though he was close enough that he knew his swarm would eventually reach them.

He just needed to funnel a lot of ethera into it.

So, without further ado, he returned to his human form, sank to his knees, and got to work. The first step was to embrace False Grove before pushing the resulting ethera into his spell. In only a second, thousands of locusts manifested, then flew toward the army. They didn’t last long, but with every passing second, Elijah conjured more and more.

Soon enough, False Grove emptied, so he dipped into his core. He’d regenerated much of his ethera while dropping rocks on the army, so he was almost entirely topped off. He put the recovered energy to good use, pouring it into Eternal Plague and fueling the resulting swarm’s exponential growth.

The cloud of locusts lived up to the spell’s name. A few hundred quickly became tens of thousands. Then hundreds of thousands. Millions. Elijah kept going far longer than he’d planned, driven forward by the stream of experience he’d received. He pushed and pushed until he’d used almost seventy percent of his ethera.

He stopped short of using Grove Conduit, though. He needed to keep something in reserve, because despite his efforts, he knew he hadn’t finished off the army. Perhaps the chaff had succumbed, and maybe a few of the stronger members, if he was lucky. But there were too many Healers among them for the spell to be fully effective.

Elijah wasn’t done, though.

After all, he’d always prided himself on his versatility. Not only could he heal and promote plant growth, but he also had a wide variety of attacks at his disposal. And so far, he’d barely scratched the surface.

He retreated.

And in retrospect, it was just in time, too, because only a few moments after he’d sprinted back to the trees, a wave of spells and projectiles descended upon the location. If he’d remained in place, he would have been grievously injured. He could have healed, but he had to remain cognizant of his levels of ethera. The second it ran out, the worse off he’d be.

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He plunged through the tree line, safe for the moment.

His first instinct was to settle in to recover his ethera, but he knew that doing so would be a mistake. If he did that, he’d give the Third Army a chance to recuperate. He refused to allow that.

Without any further delay, he shifted into the Shape of the Sky and once again took to the skies. Largely, because he wanted to inspect the results of his latest attack, and upon seeing the chaos and death, he couldn’t have been happier. Eternal Plague was an extremely powerful spell, and it had performed admirably. A full third of the army lay dead, and many more remained ill as the Healers poured ethera into their spells in an attempt to banish the afflictions.

Even the Warcallers were forced to contribute, wasting their ethera on healing rather than inflicting their debuffs on Elijah. They were the backbone of the army, but without ethera to cast their devastating debuffs, they would be no better than mediocre Warriors.

After circling a few times and letting them waste their energy, Elijah found himself hesitating. The next phase was the point of no return. Once started, there would be no backing out until it was finished. Idly, he considered recovering and repeating the previous steps, but he knew that would probably take too long. Already, he could see people hurrying to deploy more defensive stakes. No boundary had yet been reestablished, but it was only a matter of time.

Besides, he felt certain that he didn’t need to wait. They might’ve started as a hard target, but he’d softened them up enough to give him the edge he needed to emerge victorious.

With that in mind, Elijah dove.

As he screamed through the air, he initiated a shift into the Shape of Thorn. His body shifted, and the army reacted accordingly. Spells and projectiles filled the air, slamming into him. However, because of his high constitution and Scales of Bark, he was more than durable enough to endure the worst they could throw at him from afar. What’s more, every time they landed an attack, they were rewarded with a responding thorn.

Normally, he didn’t pay much attention to that ability. It was passive, so he just took it for granted. However, he’d factored it into his plan, and because they were already weakened, it only added to the load the Healers needed to shoulder.

Elijah hit the center of the army like a meteor, crushing a Warcaller underfoot and sending nearly two dozen men and women skipping across the camp. Tents fell, and Elijah found himself at the bottom of a small crater. He immediately activated Domain of Vines, then Thornbound Legion.

Roots and vines erupted from the ground with unmatched ferocity, snaking around soldiers’ legs for hundreds of feet in every direction. Then, he yanked them close. As he did so, he felt a half dozen debuffs slam into him, sending his attributes plummeting. He ignored the weakness.

He didn’t need strength or constitution for what was coming.

All he needed was Unchecked Growth, which he embraced without hesitation. More vines manifested. Some came from the ground. Others, from his body. They all targeted soldiers and any Warcallers in range. Noone could resist their pull.

Of course, Elijah didn’t make it through unscathed. A cascade of damage piled onto him. Most of it was ranged – arrows and spears, with quite a few spells mixed in – but whatever injuries they inflicted were soon repaired by his massive Regeneration. Even decreased by the Warcallers’ efforts, it was still a massive attribute that far exceeded anything that should have been possible at their tier.

Once the soldiers were close enough, Elijah finally let loose with his next attack.

The duration of the ability was vastly decreased from normal – evidence of the debuffs – but Elijah was more concerned with the final line. Usable in Shape of Thorn. He used that to his advantage, casting the ability over and over. He targeted the Warcallers he felt in range, and when he’d exhausted those marks, he moved on to the Healers. Then the Tacticians.

It was a massacre.

All around him, mushrooms gruesomely erupted from soldiers’ backs. Elijah felt wave after wave of experience flow into him, pushing him up one level after the next. More importantly, one by one, the debuffs fell away as their authors perished. Meanwhile, a scene out of the most grotesque horror movie played out all around him.

Elijah tried to ignore their screams of agony. He didn’t want to see their bodies being ripped apart by aggressively spreading fungi. He attempted to focus on the task at hand, rather than the thick coat of blood he now wore. Or the fog of spores filling the air. The smell of death and iron and all the rest that came with mass casuality.

It disgusted him. And yet, he forged ahead.

By the time Domain of Vines – and Unchecked Growth – ran their course, the battle was all but won. There were only a couple of Warcallers who’d survived, and the footsoldiers certainly hadn’t fared any better. He hadn’t planned it, but the Warcallers’ fervor for battle had worked against them. They’d rushed ahead, wanting all the glory – or just the feeling of conquest – for themselves, and so, most had been in range of the spreading effects of Nature’s Claim.

The only downside was that Elijah’s constant use of spells had drained him of both stamina and ethera. He was still functional, but it had pushed against his limits.

He wasn’t finished though.

There were still quite a lot of soldiers left. And he had a perfect tool to finish them off. So, he shifted into the Shape of the Scourge, then attacked with all the fury a ten-foot-long, venomous raptor-dragon could muster.

Which was quite a lot.

Spreading Blight leaped from one soldier to the next, killing them in only a handful of seconds. Each instance was enough to end three or four enemies. But there were still thousands of war elves out there. So, Elijah bent himself to the task at hand, pushing himself well past the point where he should have retreated to rest.

Of course, that was when the attack came.

Elijah’s only warning was the return of the vague feeling that he was being watched. That caused the slightest of twitches before something slammed into him with more force than he’d ever felt in his life.