High-Archon Vommik grit his teeth. He unlocked the power of Atomic Destruction, a new Realm of Mana only he had access to. He sacrificed his own pride and independence tying himself to said Realm, binding himself to a dungeon core.

And yet…still he could not defeat the Queen of the Dobhar. He had not even broken through her defenses!

Yes, the Realm of Atomic Destruction empowered his spells, increasing their destructive potential. That metal tree the Queen of the Dobhar made with her terrifying friend could no longer absorb his attacks, and she was forced to create new barriers. But just that. Those barriers continued to hold despite the boost in his power.

He felt as though he was missing something. Slightly more powerful beams did not equate to the devastation shown to him by the Herald of the New Dawn.

But in this case, he would have to learn by doing. He did not have the time for cautious experimentation. Even as his new beam spells faded, he grabbed the mana dissipating in the air, using it and the paths left by the magic circles to speed up the creation of new ones.

A multi-colored barrage of beams struck his barrier. The Queen of the Dobhar appeared to be cycling through different attributes, testing which would be most effective against him. He frowned as his barrier began to crack, and devoted some of his mana to reinforcing it.

Then, his own spell completed. The sky lit up as the Sunfall spell created a miniature sun, then sent it hurtling towards his enemy.

And to his surprise, the Queen of the Dobhar stopped her assault. She turned towards the attack, shifting her magic circles. A large metal plate began to appear in the sky, surrounded by regions of shifting and distorted air. Underneath the metal plate were several layered barrier spells that fused together.

Then, the spell connected with the plate, and the world exploded.

A flash of light blinded even the High-Archon as the spell connected. As his vision returned, he stared…and started to grin.

A mushroom-shaped cloud rose into the sky. The metal plate was gone completely. The fused barrier flickered as heat and shockwaves battered against it.

The Queen of the Dobhar herself was unharmed…but that was not why the High-Archon grinned. He had found a spell that produced the devastation that he sought. And more importantly…devastation that was a severe threat to the Queen of the Dobhar. She had not responded with mere barriers or evasion. No, from what the High-Archon saw she had used Spatial Magic to contain the attack. She gave the defense her full attention…and yet still decided to move the attack further away rather than resist it directly. And she did so via defenses that cost her far more mana than he had spent on the spell.

Which would be a problem for her, as High-Archon Vommik had not spent the time idly.

Since she had ceased her assault on him, High-Archon Vommik had turned all his attention to additional offense. Several more Sunfall spell circles were about to complete. And with his available mana growing larger and larger with his corrupted dungeon core, he would not have to stop anytime soon.

Eventually, she would be overwhelmed. Even if she had a dungeon core of her own as the Herald had told him, hers was a normal dungeon, with intentionally limited rates of growth and mana flow. If she did not defeat him now, he would overtake her in the long-run. So if he could force her on the defensive…then he would win.

High-Archon Vommik grinned. And then he could rain this devastation upon all his enemies. The world would bow at his feet…or would be destroyed in the light of the sun.

Seero’s robotic eye flickered. The High-Archon’s latest spell achieved critical mass for an atomic explosion. She had managed to contain it but her defense had not been efficient. Especially given that the High-Archon was forming several more of those projectiles.

She would have to try something else, as she couldn’t commit to a full Spatial containment of every projectile the High-Archon threw at her. And while she could survive if she focused her defenses on herself, the friendlies below could not.

The Equalizer could work if it could target the magic circles in question, but they were behind a powerful barrier. Given the amount of energy opposing it, the Equalizer could not break through the barrier before the spells finished. Likewise, the Equalizer’s output was insufficient to wipe out the magical nuclear warheads once they had formed.This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

At this point, the Equalizer was quickly losing relevance compared to her other capabilities. But she had no time to consider the Equalizer’s long-term fate. Several more of the spells formed in the air.

She ordered Snuan, 01R, and Lilussees to prepare to evacuate the other friendlies with their dungeon cores. If her proposed countermeasure failed, Seero would not have time to contain several nuclear blasts with a reasonable success rate. She would not risk their lives on the probabilities involved. Fortunately, the Archons and other Sun Elves were also dazed by the display of power and on the back foot due to the casualties they had taken, so they did not interfere with the friendlies’ reorientation.

And then, Seero got to work. She formed several Prismatic Bombardment magic circles in the air, for she would have to target all of the projectiles simultaneously. She then formed Spatial Angling circles directly on the projectiles with Farcasting.

The Spatial Angling triggered first, twisting around to bypass the spellform and get inside of the spell itself, and the suns grew ever so slightly dimmer. Then the Prismatic Bombardment Circles fired their beams. They were each devoted entirely to Gravity, and their purple beams fused together, firing thin, hyper-dense beams into the center of each sun. They, again, traveled along the spatial angling in order to bypass the spell’s exterior and arrive directly in its center.

The suns appeared to bubble and shift even as they fell. And just as Seero was about to order her friendlies to retreat…the suns began to fade, their fire sputtering out.

Seero’s analysis of the situation had proven correct. The suns may have been magical in nature but operated relatively similar to actual nuclear reactions. They were each a magical fusion reactor contained by their spell. And from what Seero recorded of the first, the spell condensed at the point of impact, triggering the chain reaction that would lead to a nuclear explosion.

So Seero had used Spatial Angling to expand the space inside the spell’s containment, and then used gravity to push apart the reaction, spreading it out across that space. Eventually, it was spread out too far for the reaction to continue and died out.

The now empty containment spells now dissipated harmlessly on the ground. Seero had stopped the atomic explosion spell at a fraction of the mana cost and attention required to contain the first.

Which meant she now had enough free mana and attention to focus on her opponent once more.

High-Archon Vommik gaped.

The Queen of the Dobhar…

Had pushed his spells apart?

How was that even possible?

Not only did he not understand the principle by which pushing apart a sun somehow destroyed it, he didn’t understand how she had gotten inside his spell to begin with. The mana of any given spell is resistant to interference by external mana. The mana directly from a Realm like Atomic Destruction doubly so. If anything, it would have torn apart the intruding mana, or else converted it into more of itself. At worst…the spell should have exploded, which in this case would have achieved the intended effect regardless.

That had not happened.

His only theory was that she had used that Spatial Magic to slip inside the spellform without contacting it. But that would have required a level of precision, control, and senses that even the High-Archons did not possess.

But he had no time to act surprised, for the Queen of the Dobhar had turned her attention to him again, even as she wiped out every Sunfall spell he cast. She fired one of those spells towards his barrier, so he quickly reinforced it.

And his eyes widened as, again, his barrier was pushed apart. A hole opened with it without weakening the barrier at all.

Despite the heat of atomic fire coursing through his veins, Vommik felt a chill run down his spine.

He tried to evade, casting a Sun Dash spell. But the corrupted sunlight he created…somehow curved around and he ended up at his original position. He began to sweat as he noticed Spatial and Gravity barriers now surrounding his position.

Clearly, the Queen of the Dobhar had determined a counter to his new attribute.

Vommik grit his teeth and casted a Spatial spell of his own. But the moment his mana finished the circuit the spell shattered, failing to trigger. His eyes widened.

He was now bound with a corrupted dungeon, connected directly to its Realm of Mana. That mana could not be used to cast the spells of another attribute. If he had time, he perhaps could have modified those other spells to work within his attribute, but he could not cast them as they were. He was limited purely to his Sun attribute spells until then.

The Sun attribute spells that the Queen of the Dobhar could dismantle.

And he did not have time to adjust.

The metal tree that the Queen of the Dobhar formed earlier had been converted into some large metal tube, now surrounded with Lightning Barriers and filled to the brim with Holy mana. The tube lit up, and a projectile glowing with golden and silver light accelerated it.

And then Vommik felt an impact before everything went dark.

Seero opened fire with her improvised railgun, using Gravity and Spatial magic to push aside her foe’s defenses. As such, the Holy mana-infused projectile struck the High-Archon’s torso immediately…and the source of corrupted mana Seero had detected there.

Needless to say, the core…and most of the High-Archon’s body…shattered immediately.

Seero immediately prepared to respond to a Rift opening up to a Realm composed of nuclear reactions…but infusing the projectile with Holy mana proved to be a highly-efficient choice. The burst of Holy mana helped to counteract the corrupted mana released by the core’s destruction. And at this point…Seero could detect the corrupted mana surging through the hole in the boundary. Ateia focused the Holy mana from the Material Plane and directed it there. Seero herself took control of the Holy mana from the projectile, and sent her own mana to expand it from the inside. Eventually, Seero and Ateia’s mana linked together, and the wound in the boundary was healed before it fully broke open. No Rift formed in the Material Plane as a result.

And so, the first corrupted dungeon and demon lord of Atomic Destruction was terminated.