[Ouroboros' End]Reaching the end of the cluster of soldiers beneath him, Vagha stopped spewing fire and rose to climb upward. From behind, javelins and arrows followed him for a few moments as he pushed himself upward with rapid beats of his wings. For a second or two, they still clattered against his scales, with this minority of projectiles that managed to hit his rapidly moving form shattering upon impact. Even as he reached past their range some moments later, the constant stream of attacks didn’t stop passing by below him for a few seconds as he transitioned into level flight and surveyed the battlefield.
Barely a few minutes ago, the ogres had first struck the smuggler lines. The initial charge of it had been devastating, with the largely manaless front-line being wholly unprepared to fight a foe that could shrug off the strikes from their spears with only skin-deep wounds to show for it.
The force imbalance was so bad, in fact, that even the hesitancy of the town’s forces to move too close to the rampaging ogres hadn’t dampened their initial success. Though massively outnumbered, each ogre outmatched its foes in practically every aspect. Often, they did so to the extent that even as the smugglers’ mana users joined the battle a minute later, it took the latter outnumbering the former two or three to one before they had a chance to kill even just isolated ogres.
When it came to the ogres that stayed in the line of battle, this gulf only widened. When not surrounded and cut off from the rest of its kin, each ogre was often more than a match for anything below the third rank. That didn’t mean that they were invulnerable to their foes. Though it came at a cost of tens, sometimes hundreds of soldiers for the smugglers, as more and more mana users joined the battle, the fighting equalized. Whereas before, a dead ogre was the exception, soon the battle also started taking its toll on their numbers. Not yet significantly, with even a hundred dead being little compared to the two or three thousand Vagha knew to be just in his section of the battlefield, but enough that it no longer looked as if they alone could annihilate the smuggler’s forces.
However, that was only when it came to the average ogre. Though most of the ogres with powerful or unique evolutions, like the dragon-ogre or the chief himself, had stayed back for now, a few were already active on the front lines, rapidly collapsing the smugglers' formations wherever they were. And while their kin could match a handful of enemy mana users, some of them battled a dozen without much trouble as weapons bounced off their skin and their innate abilities devastated dozens of meters of the battlefield with each attack.
This had presented an opportunity that Vagha and his fellow dragons didn’t want to miss. With the enemy spell formations disrupted by the chaos the ogres were causing and the high-ranking mages focusing on keeping the front-line from collapsing with enhancement spells and precision strikes, nothing was in a position to contest the dragons from ruling the skies.
Their first strike had relieved some pressure from the ogres. Dragon fire had swept across the enemy formation the moment Vagha had taken to the skies, devouring anything in its path and leaving even the third ranks with little chance of survival. That was despite Vagha hiding the fact that he was well into the mythic rank strength-wise by limiting his power to what it had been when he was half his current age.
By the time he had finished a second sweep across the enemy formation, the ogres he was supporting were once again gaining the advantage in the fight. Compared to the smugglers who relied on dense formations and coordinated attacks to efficiently match the ogres, their individualistic way to wage war was far less susceptible to the Vagha’s breath attack. And even when a few ogres didn’t make it out of the way in time, their resilience allowed them to endure the scorching flames significantly better than even the enemy aura users.
Though many of those that didn’t take the threat of his attack seriously burned just the same, those that were only strafed by his flames or walked into the fires that lit up on the grassy ground in their wake often managed to react. Despite only having a handful of seconds before even their impressive endurance would succumb to the flames, most managed to react in time and smother the flames that had spread to their body, either letting themselves drop to the ground to smother them in the dirt or calling upon various innate abilities to counter them.
To Vagha’s displeasure, this freedom didn’t last forever. Still, he managed three more sweeps across different sections of the enemy formation while the odd third rank aura user with a bow was the greatest resistance he encountered. But as he pulled up from his sixth attack run, he sensed more and more mana senses sweep over him.
Abandoning his next dive, Vagha circled above the enemy formation for a moment as he observed the situation. The first priority in this was locating whose mana senses were watching him, something easily done as almost all belonged to a formation of third and fourth rank mages close by to the section of the army he had been attacking. Already guessing from this that they had shifted their focus from supporting the army to counteracting his efforts, he for now only conjured a second shield spell to reinforce the reactive one he always kept active before looking at how the battle was developing without the mages as support.
What he found was far less change than he had hoped. While the lack of mage support meant that the enhancement spells empowering the smugglers’ soldiers slowly faded, the gap created by the missing direct support was more than filled by the high ranking aura users that joined the battle in the mages' place. Even the third ranks among them matched most ogres in a direct duel, with aura avatars springing up all throughout the formation and turning a very mismatched fight into a brawl between two giants.
Meanwhile, the fourth ranks easily dominated nearly all common ogres. Only a few of the especially powerful ones without a rarer evolution managed to endure on their own. The rest were forced to fall back and rely on one or two fellow ogres to join in their fight, something that didn’t always happen. As such, in just the first ten or twenty seconds of the fourth ranks joining the battle, more ogres fell than they had since the start of the fighting, with Vagha estimating that they were slowly approaching losses of ten percent of their initial force.
However, not all fourth ranks moved to engage the common ogres. In small groups of two or three, some had moved straight toward the stronger variants that were still devastating entire units of their army. Still, whereas even the strongest ogres with common evolutions barely managed to hold their own in a direct duel, these stronger variants weren’t too overwhelmed even when three fourth ranks joined their foes. It certainly forced them on the defensive and kept them from decimating the weaker soldiers in their enemies' ranks, but there was rather little even these fourth ranks could do when one of them decided that the fight was turning against him and decided to flee back behind the frontline of his kin.
Another silver lining for the ogres was that the lack of support spells once again turned the manaless soldiers into little more than a nuisance. Combined with the devastation the third and fourth ranks themselves brought, this caused casualties among them to rise, and not solely due to the ogres.
Whether this trade was worth it, Vagha couldn’t tell. While these common ogres that suffered the brunt of this counterattack filled the same societal and military role among ogres as the manaless and low ranking soldiers that were killed along with them, there were significantly more of the latter. However, the exchange also cost the fourth ranks by costing them significant portions of their mana reserves, blurring the line of whether or not it was worth it even further.
In either case, the decision wasn’t Vagha’s, so this was but a passing thought that made way when he sensed a mana buildup among the ritual formation of mages. Shifting his focus toward the mages in question, he preemptively pushed himself higher into the sky and readied himself for their spell.
With Vagha pushing his focus to the limit, the second or two that passed before the attack manifested felt closer to a minute. In that time, almost two dozen spell circles had flashed up and faded again as the casting finished and the spell started to manifest, simultaneously creating an extensive defense and the preparations for a counterattack in front of Vagha.
Though when the ritual spell struck, he quickly realized that it had been far more than necessary. While the ice storm that gathered around the mages casting the ritual and swept toward him was impressive, that was only in comparison to a typical fourth rank. When faced with Vagha’s defensive spells, the hail and freezing winds barely even made it to the first countermeasure he had prepared before already encountering significant resistance.
Met with a simple, if wide-ranging and rather powerful, heating spell, the steadily advancing ice magic erupted with steam wherever it came into contact with Vagha’s spell. Frozen air was pushed forward by the raging winds that formed the ice storm, sending snow and hail into the heat spell where they rapidly evaporated.
With the approaching attack gradually being weakened by this clash of opposing forces, Vagha unleashed his counterattack. Over a dozen spells that had been hovering suspended in the air shot forward all at once, igniting the air itself in their path. And though the ice storm weakened them as they passed through it, the attacks still reached the mages moments later.
In response, the protections around the ritual activated. Just in front of the mages closest to Vagha, the already frozen ground shifted as an ice wall rapidly expanded upward, forming a partial dome that shielded the ritual.
A moment later, the flaming attacks Vagha had unleashed struck. Bolts of fire slammed into the ice structure, cracking its surface as they punched through the first layer or two before exploding deep within it. This eruption caused the ice to bulge outward on the other side, with the surface cracking but barely enduring as the flames expanded outward and melted through the ice.
When the slower fireballs then struck, the already weakened ice wall shattered as the exploding fireballs caused a shockwave to expand just ahead of the all-consuming flames. Fragments of the crumbling ice wall were then pushed toward the mages, sending a hail of ice shards flying at them.
When the shards struck the mages, they tore through them with ease. Focused wholly on sustaining the ritual spell, they didn’t have any personal protection spells active and were thus defenseless against them. The first three mages fell in an instant, having stood almost directly behind where the wall had first been breached. Ice shards peppered their bodies and sank deep into their flesh, puncturing organs and cracking bones wherever they struck. Though likely already dead just from this, a moment later the explosion washed over them, assuring Vagha of their demise.
With their death, the ritual started to unravel. Using that moment to double down on his advantage, Vagha activated the spell that was intended to serve as his second layer of defense and conjured a wall of fire ahead of himself. When he then dashed forward, the flames led the way. Cutting through the already fading ice storm, the wall of fire neutralized the frost magic wherever it passed. Even with the spell active, this would’ve given Vagha half a second to follow after it without being affected by the frost. Now, with the ritual spell fading, the ice storm didn’t even have enough power to sustain itself, leaving a clear path with only some snow still raining down from above wherever the flames had passed through.
Using this path, Vagha reached the other side of the ice storm mere moments later. Briefly slowing down just as the wall of fire and remnants of the ice wall met, he dashed forward once he felt his spell’s energy deplete after a brief clash and shot into the resulting cloud of steam.
Before he knew it, he burst forth directly above the mages’ formation. Immediately, he let loose the dragon's breath he had prepared during his approach. Flames shot forth from his maw and washed over the first two unfortunate mages, enveloping them completely and incinerating them within fractions of a second.
Turning his head, Vagha then let his breath attack sweep across the formation. Letting it swing to the left and right in rapid succession, he scorched everything in his path as he flew straight through the formation. Beneath him, defensive spells flared up one after another as the mages desperately tried to stop his onslaught, only for these spells to disappear just as quickly when Vagha’s breath attack washed over them.
Even the few fourth ranks he sensed among the mages didn’t fare better, at least not those that were caught in the path of his attack. Shields of ice, wind, and fire all blinked into existence near the center of the formation, their casters seemingly having grouped up in the hopes of increasing their chances. Still, as the dragon fire descended onto them, it was only briefly stopped by their shield.
Within moments, the flames broke through and reached the mages. And while protective spells woven into their clothes or armor saved them for another fraction of a second, they too soon broke under the strain, causing the mages to be incinerated as flames washed over them.
By then, Vagha’s attention was already on the next group, shortly followed by yet another one as his target had once again been consumed by his dragon’s breath. By the time he finished his first flyover, around thirty mages had been turned to cinders, well over two-thirds of the entire formation.
Still, once he flew past the edge of the formation and ended his breath attack, Vagha turned sharply to the right, intending to set out for another pass over the mages. He wanted to at least take care of the last remaining fourth rank, having only noticed the man’s existence too late to easily reach him at the edge of the formation where he was.
But just as Vagha set out for his attack, his magical senses alerted him to a massive buildup of power in the skies above the frontlines. Immediately abandoning his planned attack, he turned sharply to the left to throw off any attempts to aim at him and redirected the mana he had already mobilized into his personal shield, causing a red energy field to surround him.
Only then did Vagha focus on identifying the phenomenon. Just then, the magical energy that had suddenly flooded the skies collapsed in on itself, constricting violently toward countless spots all across the battlefield before vanishing. In its place, well over a hundred mana signatures of mythic ranks appeared, their presences cascading outward mere moments later and covering the entire battlefield in a suffocating pressure.
Seeing so many of the smuggler’s mythic ranks appear at once took Vagha by surprise. And not only did a significant portion of the enemy mythic ranks just appear, with an initial sweep making Vagha confident that it was even more than on the first day of the battle, but the town’s mythic ranks were still away. Of course he could sense them already setting in motion, with at least just as many mana signatures as smugglers had appeared shooting forward from the wall, but they were still ten or twenty seconds away.
Already considering dropping his facade before the newly arrived enemies could lay waste to the ogres and the town’s army, Vagha hadn’t yet made a decision when Darganth’s telepathic message reached him.
‘We’ll not get a better chance, so you can stop holding back. Buy some time for the town’s mythic ranks to arrive. After that you can go wild.’
Hearing this, a grin flashed over Vagha’s draconic lips. Not having to be told twice, he dispelled the spell that hid his power and turned toward the new enemies. The first beat of his wings without the limiter caused Vagha to shoot forward, with his form rapidly rising as he pushed himself further and climbed higher.
To his left and right, he also sensed the mana signatures of his fellow dragons flare up. Not needing to look to know what they were doing, Vagha joined them and announced his presence by unleashing a scorching dragon’s breath at the nearest enemy.