Now, there were puppets: three nigh-ghosts, eerily exact copies of the casters they had been-now braced under the master's control. Their violet eyes reflected cold light as they watched the remaining few members of Derek's team.
The remaining four brawlers, once the fiercest, scariest members of Derek's group, now looked like frightened animals caught in the pen.
They kept slipping and sliding on the frozen ice made by Masha. Their guts would rather stay in full view than meet with dead friends transformed into servants.
"There's no stopping here, Dante's voice was sharp and crisp up in the air. End them."
His team did not need extra incitement because dead friends had driven them mad with anger. What came next was not a fight but merely "disposing" of them.
Masha stretched her hands; the area that was covered by ice wriggled, and finally sharpened spikes would jolt from under the feet of the brawlers, causing them to stumble.
Erica, while the mana slowly creeps back into her, was shooting off exact painful little firebolt rays; not primarily because she wanted to injure much, just to have them fall back at really the worst moments.
As Jin rushed in a vengeful hurry through the air, his wounds were somewhat fixed by continuous healing by Rina. But Jin would act like the fast shadow of revenge, and he had calm yet deadly style to fight with.
Instead of swinging wildly as he had before, each hit was premeditated toward a way of ending a life.
However, these are only terrifying limitations for the members of this group. Three shadows dived ahead, forming a tight wave of quiet, unbeatable death.
Brawlers screamed with their simple maces, and axes went right through the puppets' ghost-like bodies as they reached near to their end.
Whenever a brawler tries to hit a shadow, it breaks apart and comes back together at the back. They are just ghosts, and they are being messed up badly.
One after another, they went down.
Thud.
The very last put down his weapon and begged to surrender, letting his crazed eyes glow with terror, and demanded mercy as if there is any in this area. Jin accelerated the end of requests with his sword.
When the last brawler fell, Dante felt the familiar tug in their life energy, their mana, at the easy readiness of being taken.
He quickly opened himself to make a bigger army; easily adding these four strong men to his new front fighters. But when attempting to drag their spirits to him, he clearly felt as if he'd hit a wall.
It was a block of his own power- unbreakable and solid, from him realizing a limit he had not before. He sensed the presence of four new fresh bodies, ready to be raised, but the link would not form.
He checked his existing summons: the first shadow he'd made from the Toximancy user; the three he had just done; all together, four puppets.
That's a limit of four powerful ones, not just that E ranked goblin. At least for now.
Even if it were that massive, that power had an end. It had rules of its own. It had limits.
It is the one defining quality that narrows him down.
The only other thing on the other side of the clearing is enemy: Derek.
He was at the same point of the fight. Yard-long sword glimmering in red wrapped in bright rays hit hard against Eric's solid block, while quick hit was from Talia's rapier.
He sounded like a trapped animal, drawing forth the last bits of its wild strength.
"Eric. Talia," Dante called in a steady voice. "Step back."
They almost immediately stepped back and left Derek breathing hard in the middle of bloodied ground and corpses of his whole team around him.
He looked at Dante, chest pumping up and down rapidly, eyes swimming in hatred and shock.
Dante began striding toward him. His four shadow puppets moved into a guarding position around him as if they were protecting the leader.
Graviton user shadow to his left, Phantasmist to his right, and Wardcrafter and Toximancer remained together at the back. They moved together like a team of killers going for their last enemy.
"Derek, you see," started Dante in his usual tone, as if discussing a bad school assignment. "You spoke about 'survival of the fittest'. But you really never try to become the best, bully with some strong new item."
"Shut your mouth!" Derek yelled, raising his sword high. "I'll take you out myself!"
He charged at him. Dante didn't even move a bit.
"Edgar," he said without looking back. "Tell me more."
"Him, almost out of energy!" Edgar's voice strong and clear resounded from behind. "The artifact on his sword is sucking his soul! Strong swings, but steps pretty messy! Right side more guarded!"
And as Derek's huge blade came crashing down quickly, Dante merely made one easy step to his left. Sure enough, the sword struck the earth where he had stood, marking it deeply. Dante didn't have to block it.
"You got nine people together, Derek," Dante continued, circumnavigating him in a manner akin to tugging on a heavy sword from the ground.
"We waste lives, short term, for the power."
Then, Derek manages to free his sword enough to swing it in a big side arc. This time, Dante holds his ground.
A shadow of a Wardcraft user stood in front of him, a ghost barrier. The blade of Derek met it with a low sound; the impact left no damage.
"You think that killing makes you a better man," Dante said, his tone pitying and into it. "And it can do it."
"But you did not even think of what kind of strength you were building. You were just someone that killed without care."
"Me, however... I am an architect."
Fuming now, Derek left him and charged at the puppets, swinging his sword as if he were berserk. "I'll break your stupid toys!"
The puppets were still quite quick. His blade went through the Toximancy user then his shadow returned back to Dante. He wasn't freed but sent back again for usage.
It's like fighting smoke.
Every man you killed, every life you stopped, gathered for me." "With each murder you became just collecting things for me.
You did it all without knowing it, Derek."
Right: "So what you did is to build a great team towards working together to kill, and in such doing, you defensively gifted me with the best army of undead that I could have asked for. So, deep down... thanks for the present."
That was the final blow, not with any weapon but via words. It broke Derek's already tired mind completely.
Yelling unreasonably in purely blind anger, he put all of his dying energy into it and thus into his artifact.
Then he hurled himself at Dante, the brilliant sword, with determined yet mindless intent to kill, never caring about anything else. He knew that it would be a last throw, everything-or-nothing.
Dante was prepared for it, of course.
"Now," he quietly said.
And then, with his previously dissected puppets back together, he set out for a master attack. The same deadly teamwork he quite used to lead, now turned against him. Another shadow of the Graviton user was in motion, and the ground underneath Derek's feet got heavier than metal. Derek's run slowed down to a crawling tack.
It moved its hands; twelve ghost copies of Dante showed up. Each stood right around Derek, sharing the same calm, cool expression as they stood.
Derek tripped and halted all on his own. He swung savagely at the fake images while floundering, his moves seem unbearably delayed as his yells turned into whined choking noises.
Dante walked off past his ghost duplicates right until he was at the front of him. He wouldn't need a sword or anything else.
Just turned his hand into a fist.
Derek looked up at him, his eyes showing something Dante hadn't ever seen in him before. Fear. Real, total fear.
Dante punched very hard into Derek's stomach.
THUD.
The blow was not meant to kill but to crush him from inside. The air came out of his lungs in the hurt rush.
The red glow around him ceased and extinguished. The enormous sword that symbolizes his power fell to the ground with a loud clatter from his weak hands.
Clang.
And he fell to his knees-a big, roaring leader brought low, shamed, breathing hard at Dante's feet.
His ghosts were only surrounded by the dead men it caused, their quiet, violet eyes being the only evidence of watchfulness.
The team stood by, watching, in expressions of surprise, relief, and then great new fear regarding the power Dante now held.