Disclaimer: Black Clover is owned by Yūki Tabata, Studio Pierrot, and Shonen Jump.

Saga 52: Attack of the Dead Men Part 2

Outside Quatre, Clover Kingdom, Noble Realm, Night

"Miss Brigid," Charlotte mumbled out through her bandaged face, "is this really necessary? I can live with the scar, you know."

"Oh hush, don't worry your little head over it. Think of it as my way of paying you back for the nasty gash that my leader had inflicted onto you back when we first met," the scantly-clad sorceress replied, cleaning the blood off of a shaving razor with a soaked rag, "so I just peeled off your face and used my magic to help your body grow a new one back, no surgical scars required."

"Are you sure it'll work?" asked Charlotte, a little skeptical of the woman's expertise, "I mean, from where you're from, I don't exactly expect the kind of sophistication of the healing arts compared to Clover Kingdom's..." she remarked before looking around the wreckage, "... but not right now."

"Oh please, I'm no Merlin, lassie," Brigid remarked, "I ain't technically healing you... more like I'm assisting your body in its natural healing process, kinda like how a baby is incubated in a mother's womb to come out immaculately," she pointed out with utmost confidence, "after all, all building blocks of life are made from the four basic elements of [Fire], [Water], [Wind], and [Earth]. It just happens that I can use all four at once."

She then gestures her crystal ball to float towards her, with a small flicker of fire, a droplet of water, a bulb of wind, and a clump of earth orbiting around the orb.

"Offense, defense, support, recovery, or anything that magic can do..." Brigid boasted as she began floating off of the ground, "as the Ulster representative of the Spade Kingdom's Three Sages, my [Anima Magic] will cover all. Granted, Merlin can literally cheat the laws of life at his whim, and Charlemagne himself is a one-man industrial line of magical constructs, but I am well-versed in all rudimentary aspects of magic, and I simply desire to learn more about everything."

"... Still doesn't explain why you had to go and peel off my face like an apple," deadpanned Charlotte.

"Oh honey, I can only treat so many wounds and injuries in my sleep before I get bored," Brigid remarked as she laid on her belly in the air, bopping her finger on the captain's nose, "a prodigy can only cut people open so many times before she needs to find a hobby."

"Whatever," Charlotte sighed out as she headed back towards the capital. Behind her, Brigid followed, still floating in the air like an apparition taken humanoid form. "Why are you following me?" asked the captain.

"Just curious," Brigid replied, "I mean, after I heard that leader was willing to lend our establishment to you Magic Knights, I supposed I could take one night off away from secluding myself into my own lab/living space."

"... How often?" asked Charlotte about Brigid's habits.

"Unless its either for meals or one of the Three Sages literally knocking at my door, I never go out, although today is an exception," Brigid answered, "I usually look through the window with a periscope that I commissioned from Libratium and make my notes from my observations."

"Wait, aren't the three factions at war?" pointed out Charlotte.

"By 'war', we mean it doesn't go beyond a basic skirmish, although the rate happening tends to fluctuate," answered Brigid, "although compared to your mages and their admittedly abysmal magic, you might as well consider it a 'war' for easily one of our countrymen can easily raze an entire village to the ground in less than a day."

"I'll take that insult with a grain of salt," grumbled Charlotte, "if you lot think we're weak, why didn't you all just raid other outside countries?"

"Ulster is strong, but we aren't savages," Brigid replied, "we find no value in harming the weak, for it does nothing for our own growth. We're not mindless killers as you and your people would think. We're warriors, we're mystics, we're ascetics, we're natural, and above all else, we are mortal. If someone challenges us, we do not turn it down as a sign of respect for their resolve, foolish or otherwise. Everything nature brings, from its warmest blessings to its most frigid wraths, we welcome all of it. That is how we live, not as masters of nature, but mere bit players to a higher force beyond mortal comprehension called 'nature'."

"I see," Charlotte answered as she and the sorceress passed through the refugee camps, "so you all live under a code of humility."

"Not everyone though, we do have our own cultural rebels of our own," Brigid remarked, "some choose to leave the fold to either form their own or join the outside world, but every time they return to us, they come back humbled, perpetuating the cycle of arrogance and humility that all life are subjected to."

"... So the bandits that kept attacking the Clover Kingdom's western border-"

"I guess in the end, that's one of the reasons why some never came back," Brigid solemnly remarked after she'd cut off Charlotte, "don't fret, you're also players in our circle of life. All life is born to die, so we simply move along as their bodies return to where it came," she stated in a sagely manner, "humans, elves, dwarves, jotuns, Angels and even Demons, all part of the natural order of growth and decay."

"So why do you drown yourself in your research if you already accepted what you've said as fact?" asked Charlotte.

"Because my endless curiosity is part of nature," Brigid answered as she leaned onto her floating orb, "I was born for the sake of simply knowing more about my surroundings, so why fight my own endless gluttony for knowledge?"

"Famous last words?" teased Charlotte.

"Either way, I will be happy knowing that I lived as nature intended," Brigid smiled as the two reached the improvised command center for the remaining Magic Knights. Upon reaching the command center, one of the stationed mages rush towards Charlotte with an urgent expression.

"Captain Charlotte," the mage said mid-pant, "we have an issue."

"Speak," she replied.

"We immediately lost contact with the Blue Rose Knights after 6PM," the mage exclaimed, "communications were fine until it just cut off into static all of the sudden!"

"Let me take a look!" Charlotte ordered as she dashed towards the terminal, only seeing static on the projection, "dammit! What's going on!? Who's interfering with the signal!?"

"Hmm," Brigid remarked as she looked at her orb, picking up a mixed signal of different kinds of mana coming from the static, "that's peculiar."

"What is it!?" asked Charlotte, "what do you know!?"

"I'm picking up natural mana... being sourced by Demonic Mana?" Brigid remarked as she looked into it, "normally, such paradox would unravel the spell itself instantaneously due to its unstable composition, but that would assume that one side of the mana is acting in a parasitic manner," she continued to explain, "however, symbiotically? ... That can be plausible. Either way, whoever's behind this little bug clearly grasps the polar opposite sides of the magic and somehow make it work... I'd love to meet the culprit myself if it means learning new things from said person of interest-"

Charlotte then runs off in a hurry, grabbing a broom before returning to the stationed mage.

"Are the Aqua Deer dispatched?" asked Charlotte in an urgent tone, to which the mage nods. "Good. I'm following them!"

"But your orders-"

"FUCK THE ORDERS!" she barked at the mage, cutting him off, "TOO MANY DIED ALREADY! I AM NOT LETTING THE PILE GROW ANY BIGGER!"

As she flew off into the night sky with all of her mana pumped into her broom to boost her flight to godspeed.

"... Is the Wizard King a man of clemency?" asked Brigid.

"Usually, but given how everything's gone to shit, I think adding more to his pile is unwarranted," the stationed mage answered before the sorceress herself went elsewhere. "Wait," he called out, "where are you going?"

"Oh nowhere special," she remarked as she walked off elsewhere, "just another reason to sate my curiosity."

Clover/Diamond Kingdom Borderlands, Neutral Territory, Night

"So, any ideas?" asked Puli as she and Aion flew above the shambling crowd of claymen, trying to assess the situation at hand.

"Their sounds..." Aion remarked as her ears perked, trying to pick up anything within their bodily structures that might be able to serve as a weak point for her [Severing Magic]. "Dammit," she cursed, "I might as well be trying to hear a chicken nugget move on my plate. They have nothing but clay and loose earth in them!" the last Diva tirades in mounting frustration, "there's nothing for me to cut!"

"Wait, doesn't [Severing Magic] do what it says?" pointed out Puli, "like you know, cut stuff?"

"It's not so simple," Aion replied as she begun her explanation, "my [Severing Magic] doesn't 'cut' anything, rather, 'separates' solid mass into multiple parts," she explained, "ergo, while my cutting proficiencies are on part with Captain Jack of the Green Mantises, even he can't cut through water and permanently separate them into two waters, per say, ergo, I CANNOT, SEPARATE WATER, WHICH THE HORDE BENEATH US ARE COMPOSITION-WISE."

"... You could've just said that they can put themselves back together," Puli pointed out in protest of Aion's long-winded explanation. "So in other words, we have the worst possible compatibility with these chuckle-schmucks below us," she stated before coming up with an idea on how to utilize Aion's [Severing Magic] in this situation, "... I got an idea."

"Let's hear it," the twintailed blind Magic Knight replied.

"Instead of cutting the constructs, how about we cut the ground itself?" Puli pointed out, "even water gets pooled into ditches, right?"

"The same stratagem that we used to pull out the swords?" Aion replied as she drew her broken Chokutō from her cane, "let's try it then!" she remarked as she flew down closer towards the shambling hoard, the latter responding by turning their hands into a three-barreled protrusion that begun to spin around in increasing rate of speed.

[INTERCEPT. INTERCEPT.] droned the horde as they begun firing a mulligan of spells towards her, parrying them with her [Severing Magic] to make enough room for her to squeeze through the gaps formed by her slashes.

"[Severing Magic]..." Aion incanted as the arc of her blade dug throughout the ground that the claymen were founded from, "... [Kesagiri]/[Monk's Robe Cut]!"

A V-shaped fissure was formed on the very ground that the claymen were threading upon, followed up by another V-fissure before another, carving the earth into an arrangement of ditches that caught the claymen into its numerous crevices that all formed into a six-pointed star.

"That should hold them for a little while," Aion remarked as she flew back up, "we should hurry back to camp and-"

"LOOK OUT!" Puli cried out as she pulled in Aion towards her, the latter getting out of a projectile's way. The two looks down, finding a mass of humanoid masses crawling out of the cracks like moss or fungi. "... Dammit, thought that was too easy."

[Switching priorities: INTERCEPT to CAPTURE.] the claymen remarked as their three-barreled arms transformed into single-barreled smoothbores. [Red Ochre Magic: Capture Clay.]

Numerous shots of reddish-brown mud were shot towards the two, the flaccid projectiles expanding midair like nets cast out to entrap the two.

"UP!" Puli cried out as she pulled Aion higher up towards the sky as they tried to get out of range of the splotches of clay that were fired towards them, the barrage ceasing to slow down as the two try to fly up higher to be out of their range.

"... Okay," Puli sighed out as she and Aion took labored breaths upon reaching above the clouds, the air around them rather thin, "... I think we're safe... but we're going to have to go back down since the air here... is super thin."

Before the blind mage can say anything, her ear perks, picking a smorgasbord of sounds coming from below. The sounds weren't the ones that usually sounded out when those claymen shot their cannons, but rather, the sounds of something being built up.

Back below where the claymen were entrapped in, they were building a long, cone-tipped contraption akin to an actual tower, only at the tip, the claymen were stuffing themselves into it, all of them cramming into the singular point like an ant colony marching into an anthill's entrance.

[Applying Fire Magic, Wind Magic, Red Ochre Magic, Reinforcement Magic, and Spatial Magic.] the claymen all declared in unison as they all crammed themselves into their construct, [Super Combination Magic: Scud Shoot.]

The construct's bottom then flares to life, propelling the rest of its structure off of the ground and towards the sky, flying ever upwards as Aion's ears pick up a peculiar sound pattern that indicates the projectile heading towards the direction of the basecamp behind them.

"SHIT!" Aion cursed as she flew towards the propelling projectile carrying the claymen towards their rear lines, intending to cut it down before the payload reaches its target, "PULI! I NEED YOUR HELP!"

"Just be careful not falling off!" Puli cried back as she opened her grimoire, "I can only put a single pair of wings at a time on a person! [Wing Magic: Angel Sandals]!"

Aion as she flew towards the [Scud Shoot], her wings on her back suddenly disappear, only for them to reappear, each wing now next to each of Aion's ankles, allowing her to glide her towards the construct before placing her feet onto it, the [Angel Sandals] keeping her feet entrenched onto the vertical surface area to prevent her from slipping off.

"... Why thank you for reconstituting yourselves into solid matter," Aion mocked with a smirk as she redrew her broken chokutō from her cane, "now I can cut you all down without fear! [Severing Magic: Uke-nagashi]/[Spread Deletion]!"

Aion then performs an uppercut-swing onto the rocket, the magic emitting a giant upwards crescent slash that struck against the rocket's clay surface, veering slightly-off course, but not drastically enough to get it away from its intended target.

"Of course it wouldn't be that easy..." Aion clicked her tongue in frustration, "... no reason for me to stop-"

[Secondary Prioritization, eliminate the saboteur.] the rocket itself declared as the claymen emerged from the projectile's surface with the intent to eliminate Aion.

However, Aion starts laughing to herself as her ears can now hear the claymen's insides.

"... Flying at such high velocities forces you lot to convert your bodies to pure solid just not get blown off like fresh bird shit, am I right?" Aion remarked as her lips curled into a predatory grin, "that means now I can go swinging hard as I want! [Severing Magic - Modified Variant Stance]!"

An aura of force bursts from Aion's body as she drew her blade out, but now, the color of her mana coating her broken blade slowly changing from snow-white to bright red.

"[Sanpō-giri - Gyakusatsu]/[Walking Cut - Massacre]."

Aion then disappears into a blur as the solidified claymen all had their ankles cut off, causing them to fall off of the flying rocket towards the ground. Puli nearly misses the two falling on top of her, and sees that the solidified claymen were shattered like vase hitting the floor upon reaching ground, indicating that they somehow lost their ability to change their structural composition upon being separated from their payload.

... Huh, guess whoever made em must really suck at poker, Puli thought as she saw the separated payload were all being slaughtered by the blind Blue Rose Knight, because you never go all-in this early in the game. When the only option is to go all-in, you're better off folding.

As Puli kept a safe distance between herself and Aion's trail of carnage leaving behind dried-up remnants of the claymen behind, the ground beneath the two's flight slightly bubbles before a small domed head with a violet monoeye peeked out before submerging back into the ground.

Underground Laboratory, Former Diamond Kingdom, Night

"Report," ordered Yama as he slouched on his throne of bones.

"[Super Combination Magic: Scud Shoot] is currently under attack by a mage with [Severing Magic]," the Lilith before the monitor reported, "due to the payload exerting a stronger than average horizontal in its travel, the [Homunculus Mass-Production Type] are forced to solid forms in order to engage the threat present. The payload itself is only carrying around 75% of our main forces while the remaining 25% are preparing for a pincer assault."

"Tell me something that I don't already know," Yama rebuked, "what of the [Long-Range Reconnaissance Type]?"

"It has reached behind enemy lines and is ready to engage the coming reinforcements," the Lilith operator replied, "it'll be ready to engage the reinforcements beneath notice before they can make contact with the ones targeted by the [Scud Shower]."

"And of the detachment," Yama pointed out as he looked at the map with the dots indicating of the enemy forces, "are they in position?"

"Ready to engage at will, milord," the Lilith answered.

"T-minus 1 minute," Yama ordered as he got up from his throne before heading back into the hallway, "take them by surprise at their least coordinated."

As Yama left the command terminal, he runs into Cleopatra, her bare left shoulder still smeared with the remains of the jailer that failed to contain Mammon a week prior.

"Cleo," Yama called out to the Lilith, the latter springing back in fear upon being called to, "you have something to say to me, then say it."

"... Was it really necessary to kill him?" Cleopatra stammered out, "I... I mean, the circumstances of Mammon's escape was outside of his influence-"

Yama near-misses his blast of [Death Magic], grazing off Cleopatra's hair and hitting the wall behind her instead.

"Failure, regardless of circumstance, will inspire more failure without any consequences put into place," Yama pointed out as his index finger smoked at its tip, "there was nothing left to learn from Mammon or his escape, so I had to make it clear what happens when things go beyond expectations," the Prince of Death stated, "tell me, despite my powers, do you know why I started making the [Homunculus] in the first place?"

Cleopatra shakes her head.

"... Come with me further down," he ordered, upon which, the Lilith followed the Prince deeper underground before reaching a giant gaping chasm across the floor before their feet. Without any warning, Yama grabs Cleopatra by her wrist as he jumps deep into the chasm, falling further and further down into the abyss of which its darkness rivaled that of Hell's own.

As she kept hurling down deeper and deeper into the pit, old memories of her time at Hell, all of those times being born, killed, reborn, and killed again before being reborn in the endless infernal cycle that she'd rather not remember. Hell before Satan was simpler, and she herself was a good hider before the Opposer came to be and took over as new management, overhauling the structure from a hierarchical anarcho-tyranny into a totalitarian surveillance state where everyone suffers proportionate to their given sin.

Satan's was [Wrath], and his punishment was simply dealing with Hell and its inhabitants. to which she (along with a fair majority) calls bullshit on the "punishment" part.

But her traumatic flashbacks were quickly cut short as soon as Yama's feet and Cleopatra's whole body hit the ground, the former not leaving behind so much as a single crack on the ground while the latter collapsed into an undignified heap as the whole floor beneath her caved into a crater upon landing.

"This way," Yama remarked as he dragged the Lilith across the floor like a child's rag doll as he entered into the open doors found at the bottom of the cavern. "Tell me, Cleo," asked Yama to the beaten Lilith, "why do you think that the Diamond Kingdom persisted despite it's less than hospitable status?"

"... I just assumed that the people that used to live here are just stupidly stubborn for their own good," Cleopatra mumbled out as she got back up.

"But where does that hope come from?" Yama asked, "no matter how many times I try to learn what 'hope' means, I just keep running into dead ends," the Prince explained, "why hope in the face of insurmountable odds? Why in the face of absolute death, they still believe that they can persist?" he asked, "... just what makes them so special that I just can't erase them all with my [Death Magic] instantly rather than simply erasing one organ at a time?"

"We Demons just accepted humans and life in nature are simple in concept but complex in execution," stated Cleopatra, "your [Death Magic] can only erase what you can comprehend, so if you desire to erase all life in this world, which in of itself is impossible on your own and all of us combined!"

"... Who says it was only us?" pointed out Yama as he raised his tattered grimoire, the pages still glowing in the sickly black-shaded green, "[Death Magic: Obscurant Deletion - Illuminate]."

With the snap of his fingers, the darkness around them completely disappear, around them exposing the carved out walls of the chambers around them, laid around them being skeletons with split skulls and broken bones. At the center of the room was an elaborate circle, its runic patterns carved into the earth itself, depicting a stubby, blocky-looking humanoid with two circles on its "head", looking painfully simply compared to the diagram around it.

"... What is this place?" asked Cleopatra.

"Have you ever wondered why there was an elaborate underground system beneath the city of Sparta in the first place?" asked Yama, to which Cleo shakes her head in unawareness, "they weren't the first to be here. This place isn't a manmade system of tunnels that all link in a happenstance fashion," the Prince pointed out, "this place that we're in is the very heart of the Earth Temple."

"The WHAT!?" exclaimed Cleopatra, "why haven't I heard of it until now!?"

"Evidently, the former Diamond Kingdom had a massive loathing towards the Earth Temple Acolytes," Yama explained, "judging by how old the bones are, I'd estimate them to be about 25 years old, and the fractured bones indicate that they were attacked," the Prince pointed at the destroyed skeletons, "call it a hunch, but there might've been a purge taking place all the way down here."

"That still doesn't explain the reason why I haven't heard of them!" pointed out Cleopatra.

"Both sides might've played to the former's obscurity," Yama pointed out, "the Earth Temple was built all the way down here, which implies secrecy, but after the purge, the lack of public knowledge of the former implicates the latter, the Diamond Kingdom, of scrubbing the former's existence with extreme prejudice."

"For what reason?" pointed out Cleopatra, to which Yama leads her further into the chamber, pointing towards a mural depicting two humanoids facing each other down in confrontation as their surroundings were set ablaze, forests caught on fire, homes and entire cities leveled to the ground, and the two titans simply fighting each other as the world burned around them.

"The one that is blocky is apparently the [Earth Spirit: Gnome], the very subject of worship of the Earth Temple Acolytes," Yama explained, "the Homunculus Army were an abandoned project by the Diamond Kingdom that uses the Earth Spirit as a basis to mass-produce an immortal army of earth. However, judging by the bodies present, it seems if there was a minor disagreement that led to the purge."

"So what you're saying is that the bulk of our fighting/expeditionary forces are literally mass-produced versions of the Earth Spirit itself?" Cleopatra remarked, to which Yama nods in confirmation. "Okay, but what of the other?" the Lilith again asked while pointing towards the giant wreathed in flames.

"When I first looked at it, I couldn't even figure out what it was to begin with, a monster or an abstract representation of a calamitous force," Yama remarked as his eyes down towards the smoothed-out segment of the mural below, "the one opposing it has its name destroyed due to either natural erosion or deliberate vandalization, but judging by how its body is covered in flames, I can vouch that it's the culprit behind the fire that might've turned the Diamond Kingdom into the inhospitable wasteland that it is today."

"Wait a minute..." Cleopatra remarked as her face looked that of someone remembering something important, "... giant humanoid... covered in flames... Gnome..." she recited as the realization came towards her like a flash of lightning that struck her right on her head, "... I think I remember what its name is, but not much else."

"Let's hear it," remarked Yami, who's just as engrossed behind the enigma, all to fill out the blanks that he can use later on.

"... Goliath, the Sin of [Ignorance]," the Lilith pointed out at the flaming colossus, "he is the 'Earth-Scorcher' of the [Fallout Four]."

En Route towards Clover/Diamond Kingdom Borderlands, Clover Kingdom, Forsaken Realm, Night

"*Yawn*, damn, the whole week was hell," Rill yawned out as he and his detachment of the Aqua Deer Magic Knights flew on their brooms towards their rendezvous point, "... didn't even get to mix paint, let alone, draw after my studio got wrecked by the giant swords..." he sighed out, "... that would've made for a really good subject for my art too... maybe add it to one my spells-"

"Captain," Fragil remarked as she placed a small patch of snow against his cheek to wake him up from her captain's funk, "time and place."

"... You're right," Rill remarked before he slapped himself awake, "... this is no time to be thinking about painting! After we fix this mess, I'll paint the picture of the denizens of the Clover Kingdom smiling!" he declared, "sure as a hell of a lot better than painting a portrait of forest of swords in hindsight, that's for sure!"

"... I guess that's progress," deadpanned Fragil as she tugged her fur-cap down.

"Eh, that's the Captain for ya," a plain looking Aqua Deer Magic Knight remarked to Fragil, "marches to the beat of his own drum, and he's still pretty young, so let him dream a little."

"Shut up, Eric," Fragil snapped coldly, "you don't even do jack shit."

"Oh come on," Eric bemoaned, "you just haven't seen what I can do-"

"EVERYONE!" an urgent voice cried out from behind, revealing to be Captain Charlotte of the Blue Rose Knights flying on her broom, but her face bandaged completely, the appearance frightening everyone who notice a little bit.

"What are you doing here-"

"IT'S A TRAP!" Charlotte cut off Rill's statement before a thundering bang sound echoed throughout the air.

In the next moment, Eric's head was no longer on his neck, its visceral remnants now splattered all over Rill's and Fragil's faces, coating them in a deep shade of red. Before they could even react what was going on, more Aqua Deers started losing their heads with each bang that screamed through the night sky, taking out more of them as Charlotte's warning heeded true.

"FRAGIL!" Rill cried out as he pulled out his grimoire with his palette and paintbrush, "GIVE ME COVER!"

"[Snow Magic: Winter Mirage Veil]!"' Fragil incanted as a shroud of pure white burst from the pages of her grimoire, completely obscuring them from their assailant's sights.

At about roughly 2 kilometers away, the [Long-Range Reconnaissance Type Homunculus], it's arm, now a giant barrel with it's insides grooved for smoother firing trajectory, raised up by a bipod, looked at the sudden white cloud of snow that completely cut off its sights from its targets, unable to discern their exact location to blast them out of the sky.

To sense their magic, it then begins to use its two disc-like pauldrons to detect mana signatures and point out their locations, spotting several signatures in the obscurity of white.

[Stone Magic: Rock Railgun.] the Homunculus declared as it then fired another shot that emitted another thundering sound from its fired barrel, the pointed stone shell projectile jettisoning across the air before it ripped through the signature before it disappeared.

This is taking too long, the voice in the sniper's head spoke, kill them all in one shot.

Upon acknowledgment of its new orders, it then chambers another round into its barrel. But unlike the streamlined shell with the pointed spitzer point at its end, this next one was more round-tipped and its outer casing being composed of numerous smaller ball-like objects, making the new shell look like a bunch of grapes in comparison.

[Stone Magic: Scattershot Stoning.] the sniper declared as its barrel shot out its clustered projectile towards the white cloud. Upon the projectile entering into the obscured patch of sky, the cluster than explodes into smaller projectiles that scattered itself in all directions, taking out all of the mana signatures within.

Direct hit, the voice remarked, check for bodies below firing zone to confirm kills.

The Homunculus acknowledges the order as it then reverts its arm back to its default state before sinking back into the earth.

But unbeknownst to the assailant, its targets sans the ones it actually hit prior were perfectly fine, albeit, a little rattled.

"Okay, everyone okay?" asked Rill, his voice shaking from the trauma of having to wipe off the remains of his own subordinate Magic Knight's head off of his face.

"We're alive, that's okay enough for me," Fragil remarked as she took off her bloodied hat, "... how many did we lose?"

"Counting Eric, I'd say around four people," Cesc pointed out as he wiped the sweat off of his brow, "still though, what's going on up ahead!?"

"That's what I'd like to know," Charlotte pointed out, "I just received word that communications with my assigned squad have been cut off all of the sudden-"

"And you didn't even bring backup?" Fragil pointed out, to which Charlotte groans in disappointment aimed at herself. "... Honestly, I can't blame you for this," she remarked, "we're already stretched thin after the Rain of Steel killed off more than half of us Magic Knights total, so of course even if you did, there wouldn't be that many to begin with..."

"We're gonna have to make do," Charlotte grimly replied as she looked over the bush to see if she could spot the attacker that shot them all down, "... I'm open to suggestions."

"I want to run away..." Rill remarked to himself, "... but where?"

"Thank you for not immediately assuming that my squad ahead of us are compromised," Charlotte deadpanned with a hint of cold ridicule in her tone of speech, "... although I really shouldn't be too hard on you, given that you're the one who painted decoy copies of us to take our place."

"Hey, it's the least I can do," Rill replied before hitting an inspiration for a new idea, "... I got one."

Meanwhile, the [Long-Range Reconnaissance Type] waded through the dense forest patch laid before the wastes of the former Diamond Kingdom, its sole monoeye and dual-disc pauldrons trying to search for bodies that might've hit the ground. At the same time, its head crest was making sure to intercept the signals coming from the East to keep the communication severed as a way to isolate the opposition to throughly exterminate them.

As it looked around, trying to find any residual traces of mana that might come from fresh corpses, it then spots one ahead. As it approached closer towards the dead body, it identifies it as the following: young male in its mid-teens, bright sky-blue hair, and cause of death: chest cavity.

Found one, the voice remarked before giving its next order, retrieve the body and collect its genetic information. Do the same to the others you find.

As it then opened up its body to retrieve the body, the latter suddenly explodes into a bramble of thorns that entangles the Homunculus in place.

THE HELL!? the voice barked out in disbelief.

Elsewhere, Rills chuckles to himself as he'd admired his own work from afar as the others proceed to traverse the next two kilometers on foot.

"I'd say, have to give this one to you, Miss Roselei," Rill complimented, "your [Thorn Magic] adds the right appeal of dissonance to my [Paint Magic]'s unsuspecting nature of the current portrait."

"Using your prior [Illusionary Shadow Army] as a template for our escape plan," Charlotte replied in a semi-impressed tone, "as expected of an artist."

"What can I say?" Rill remarked as he then saw the scrambling clayman free itself from the bramble and walk towards another "corpse" that Rill had conjured, this time of Fragil's likeness, only for it to reveal itself to be a box trap from Cesc's [Copper Magic] and trap it inside, "I like what I do, and because I now can't take out my frustrations on whoever actually wrecked my studio, then that guy can appreciate my latest work, the [Dead Poet's Society], in that guy's place as a way to get the edge off!"

Out of the copper encasement, a clay fist bursts a hole through, with the rest of the Homunculus to spill itself out back to the earth.

They're getting away, said the voice in the Homunculus's head, the residual magic signatures might be traps! it pointed out, I'll trace the area for the quickest way through! Until them, wait them out! Either way, their backs will be open to your shots soon enough!

Upon receiving its orders, the [Long-Range Reconnaissance Type] sinks back into the earth to wait the traps out until a way forward has been given, letting the others go while it readies itself to snipe in the back just in case if they wise up.

Then, it'll take them out where they stand.

Clover/Diamond Kingdom Borderlands Expeditionary Encampment, Neutral Territory, Night

"... So what you're saying is that there's a hoard of claymen coming towards us?" Juniper remarked.

"Crazy shit, I know," Cole pointed out, "but given that about a few hours ago, we were plucking giant swords off of the ground to stabilize the comms, so you tell me which sounds more stupid."

"Both," Borja remarked, her eyes sporting bags underneath, and looking very displeased that her sleep was interrupted, "we've come to live in a world where no one can sleep without something going on to ruin their day."

"Ah right," Sol remarked, "Borja's a real stickler when she wakes up before 7 in the morning..." she sighed out before getting the matters straight, "look, the point is, just prepare for a night raid and keep the lights on."

"Since when did you start taking a guy's side?" Wainsley pointed out.

"Not important," Cole replied as he lit a lantern that he'd borrowed from Jericho a week prior with the embers of the dead campfire, "just keep your eyes peels-"

His words were then cut off as soon as something shot through his lantern and shattered it into pieces, the light killed off in the process.

Everyone present then tenses up, as now they begin to take the only male Blue Rose Knight's warning to heart.

"Shit, they're already onto us!" Sol remarked as she readied her grimoire, "everyone, form up-"

A scream cuts her off followed by bubbling sounds akin to a boiling vat of soup.

... In a place where the closest source of water was about a half a kilometer away.

Cole then looks down, spotting that the ground around his feet suddenly felt looser than usual.

"Oh shit," he cursed as he jumped away from where he was standing, an arm of clay bursting out in an attempt to seize him, only for the latter to grope around blindly before peeking its monoeye out of the ground, and the former bumping into Sol before knocking her down.

"Hey! What gives!?" Sol snapped as she nudged Cole away from her.

"EVERYONE, OFF THE THE GROUND!" Cole cried out as he got onto his [Nimbus Platform], "THEY'RE COMING FROM BELOW!"

At the exact same time when Cole warned the others, a massive glob of clay shrouded another Blue Rose from behind, completely pinning her onto the ground before she herself drowned into the earth itself before she can scream.

But this time, there was a witness.

"Oh my god, Risacca!" Juniper cried out before she began to notice the ground before her starting to sway like water. Upon seeing the earth burst out into a thicket of arms, she makes a hasty retreat while parroting Cole's warnings. "EVERYONE! GET OFF OF THE EARTH!"

"Where's my broom!?" another Blue Rose Knight cried out in the dark.

"Shit, I bumped into someone!" another cried out.

"Everyone, to me!" Sol rallied the others towards her with her [Raging Mother Earth], "get on-"

Suddenly, even Sol's [Earth Magic] weren't spared from the assailant's underground assault as it began sinking beneath the earth it was treading on, trapping it waist-deep as it kept sinking further in before Sol dismissed her construct right after getting onto Cole's [Nimbus Platform].

"... Uh, thanks," Sol awkwardly remarked.

"Save it for later-"

The two were then blasted off of the [Nimbus Platform] after a shot of [Fire Magic] hits Cole in the back before the explosion took them out of the air.

Sol immediately strips Cole of his burning robe to spare him of further injuries, but his back was already charred black.

"Shit!" Sol cursed as she and the other Blue Rose Knights found themselves surrounded by the claymen, all of whom have their barreled arms aimed right towards them.

[Commencing Capture.] one of the claymen remarked, [Retrieve the biological samples and distribute-]

The clayman was then cut off as its composition changed from loose earth to solid pumice.

"What the-" Sol's remark was then cut off the remaining claymen around them were then instantly turned into pumice statues.

"[Earth], [Wind], and [Fire]," a sultry female voice remarked from above, revealing herself to be Brigid, floating in the air while her hand held an orb with small bits of the stated elements orbiting around it at the tip of her finger, "[Earth] as base, [Wind] as property, and [Fire] as conversion. Pumice, world's only rock that can floats in water. My [Anima Magic] is the ultimate elemental magic where it encompasses all of the four elemental spectrum, and with it, no enigma of the world's natural laws are out of my reach."

Even as some of the pumice men were able to move, they now deemed her as a priority as evidenced by them pointing their barrels at her in the air, but their shots barely came out of their barrels, their velocity completely neutered by their structural conversion affecting their inner workings.

From above, Brigid lets out a disappointed sigh before her expression became that of possibly the most disdainful expression possible of that of the human emotional spectrum.

"... I am bored now," Brigid declared coldly as her orb then switched properties, "[Water], [Earth], and [Wind]," she chanted as the remaining Blue Rose Knights quickly got out of the way, "[Water] as base, [Earth] as property, and [Wind] as conversion."

In the skies above, entire glaciers appeared, large mountains of ice suspended in the air, completely eclipsing the night sky with their titanic shadows.

"IS SHE TRYING TO KILL US ALL WITH THEM!?" Juniper cried out.

"SHUT UP AND RUN!" Sol barked back while she carried the unconscious Cole on her back while running from the coming blast zone, now the former-claymen-now-pumice-men trying to escape, but are unable to sink back into the earth due to their changed properties no longer being similar to that of the earth their walking on.

"[Anima Magic: Hailstorm]."

The glaciers in the air then dropped like boulders unto the pumice soldiers, crushing them beneath into fine powder, quaking the earth upon impact, knocking several Blue Rose Knights off of their feet as the glaciers fell behind them, edging closer and closer as they continued to evacuate.

After a few seconds, the rain of glaciers stop, and Brigid lights her iron pipe as she landed before the Blue Rose Knights.

"Thanks for the help, but..." Sol remarked now that the remaining Blue Rose Knights found themselves surrounded in giant blocks of ice, underneath them, their brooms being crushed yet again, "... can we go about another moment of not having the sky itself falling onto our heads!?"

"You're welcome," Brigid deadpanned as she blew out a scented plume of smoke coming from her pipe, "I just happened to be passing by after someone that I treated ran off towards this direction."

"We were doing fine before you got here," another Blue Rose Knight protested.

"Oh please, even blind mice were more coordinated than you lot," Brigid remarked.

"Okay, that's enough," Juniper remarked as she broke up the confrontation beforehand, "look, thanks for the help, but now, how are we going get out of here-"

"GET OUT OF THE WAY!" Aion's voice screamed out from the air as she rode the earthen rocket headed towards her way while being covered head to toe in cuts and bruises.

"OH CRAP!" Sol remarked as she began forming an earthen barrier around herself and everyone else, "EVERYONE INSIDE!"

As they all entered into the dome of hardened earth, the rocket's outer shell is then purged, releasing the remaining Homunculus in its payload as they all dropped towards the dome. As the claymen hit the dome, they bled through the encasement, and one of them dropped towards Sol from above...

... Only for a blast of icy wind to freeze it solid before exploding into a ball of fire from the inside, completely disintegrating it.

"... Hm, I take back what I said prior," Brigid remarked as Sol undid her barrier, "you now have my attention, little scamps."

"Oi, I'm trusting you to not get us caught in your crossfire?" Sol remarked as the remaining Blue Rose Knights rallied to a last-ditch offensive against the sprawling horde of claymen.

"Whatever nature dictates," Brigid replied as she flicked the ashes out of her pipe before facing down unto the Homunculus army, floating orb in presence, "now then, let's be done with these shoddy knockoffs, shall we?"

To Be Continued...

Author's Notes: Trying to post bi-weekly, but change in schedule is really hard when one's motivation tends to fluctuate. Regardless, gotta keep a good thing going, for lack of a better term.

As for Brigid, yes, she's practically Merlin from Seven Deadly Sins, her [Anima Magic] referencing her BS-levels of arcane mastery by being able to manipulate [Fire], [Water], [Wind], [Earth], and every element in-between with ease. Hell, her name Brigid is the same name of the same Gaelic Goddess, who's basically the Athena of her own Gaelic Pantheon, but more sorceress than warrior woman.

And the Homunculus being mass-produced Earth Spirits is foreshadowing, and I just realized that I am horrible at keeping secrets.

References:

- Brigid's line "a prodigy can only cut people open so many times before she needs to find a hobby." is the exact same line that Dr. Emily Grey used in Red VS Blue.

- Rill's [Dead Poet's Society] is named after the movie, Dead Poets Society.

- Brigid's chant during when she comes to the Blue Rose Knights' (coincidental) aid was an unintentional shout-out to the band, Earth, Wind and Fire.

So, what do you think of this Saga?

Please leave a comment or a review, for I'd like to know what my audience are thinking!