161 An Android In A Garden
The man was still looking around for the source of his shield getting triggered while Altair started to form her attack plan.
Since the man did not use that ash weapon against her immediately, that told her that he was expected to capture her alive. Since that was the case, the other weapon was probably some disabling weapon that she had to avoid at all costs. The other weapon was likely not to even be used.
She also didn't know how many people had come but she did know she had to at least kill this man before her now. Otherwise, she probably wouldn't ever see him again. This was likely her only shot at dealing with the man.
So, Altair decided she would go all out against him.
As the Mana Fog rushed through the door and the man took a couple steps into the room, a black sheet spread out around Altair. It raced across every surface within the room in moments. When it reached the doors out of the room, it formed a wall instead of a doorway, continuing to rush on its path to cover all things in the environment.
Within a few seconds, Altair and the man were sealed in a black box as Altair felt a rush of adrenaline start pumping through her veins.
The men surveying the assault androids that were sent in on the mission at that moment were stunned by what their sensors were showing them. On the Holodisplay that they had been watching, A2 had successfully gone to the third floor and entered the east-most room that contained, likely, the target and another person. They couldn't tell for sure as they were using heat signature sensors and only saw a child and a woman. That was all they needed to start their assault, the signature of a child.
Once the woman had vanished from the heat signature following a rush of heat, they knew that she had been eliminated by A2. However, moments after that, A2 and the child had completely vanished from their sensors. They weren't even able to read into the room they were in at all. They had scrambled to switch to different detection methods but all of them came up with no reading and signal. They were stunned.
And then they sent A1 and A3 to the third floor to investigate the room as well, making sure that they moved together in case something else happened.
Altair had used her Shadow Magic to create a closed space. As far as she knew, it was impossible to break through. At least it was in her old world. Here, she had no idea. Furthermore, from what she could see, the Mana Fog that was within the cube had been cut off completely from the rest of and had quickly dissipated as its connection was lost. That was one less then she had to keep in mind for the time being.
However, that was just the first part of the Magic. The second part was what she had become known for in the Rebanon Kingdom and why they called her the Massacre Queen. Since she would often use this Magic to completely entomb thousands of Humans at once and then proceed to slaughter them all without allowing a single one to escape, it had caused that title to be granted to her by the Human armies when they first encountered it.
They had tried many things to break the Garden she made for them. But none of them worked. She was counting on it this time as well as the walls began to bleed Shadow Creatures.
From all of the walls, including the ceiling, dozens of Shadow creatures began pouring out of the walls like they were doorways to another world. There were Shadow Knights, Shadow Wargs, Shadow Basalisks, and even Shadow Mechas that Altair had just been testing out. They were all created from her imagination and each took a different amount of Mana to create while she maintained the area they could be created at.
None of them were the deformed inhuman masses that she had once made when she first discovered she could do this Magic. She was no longer an amateur at using it and could control it far better than the first time. She could also increase the amount of Mana she spent on creating the Shadows in order to give them more strength and speed.
They also immediately charged at the man with a single-minded purpose: destroy the enemy.
The man in the center reacted immediately to the rush of creatures within the room. Its sensors picked them up the moment they came out of the walls and ceiling. Knowing how many were there and that it was in a close quarters situation, it didn't hesitated to pull out two small metal hands from its sides while its hand closed up at the same time. From the handles a burst of red energy came out and formed a blade as soon as they hit its hands. It then started to dance toward the center of the room with the blades cleanly cutting through the Shadows as if they weren't there.
Altair's eyes narrowed as she stood to her feet and watched shadow after shadow get cleaved cleanly in two with a single swing. She had seen people in her world who were capable of such feats of strength before, but the person before her wasn't really using much strength. It was like the weapon itself was too strong and thus he didn't need to use that much power on every swing. Since he wasn't even moving quickly, that seemed to back-up her logic as well.
This caused Altair to frown slightly as she began to realize that all ground based shadows were probably a bad idea if she wanted to kill this person. Of course, she could rush into the fight as well but if he happened to knock her unconscious from a random attack then the Magic would end immediately. That wasn't worth the risk, at least not yet anyway.
Altair began adding various birds, bats, and wyverns to the creatures that were allowed to be made within her Garden. She also set them to spawn on the upper areas of the room and from the ceiling while removing the ground-based shadows that were coming from the ceiling to make room for them to come out faster.
Once she had done so, she consciously checked her Mana. To create this small of a Garden it only took about fifty buckets of the nine hundred she had available for this battle. In the span of thirty seconds, before she added the aerial shadows, she had burned away another forty buckets. At her estimate, with the inclusion of the aerial shadows, she could probably continue to fight for another seven or eight minutes before she was spent. But fighting to exhaustion wasn't something she wanted to do considering what she suspected would happen when she ran out of juice.
Wyverns, massive bats, and predatory birds started to swoop in from the sides around the android. The android didn't get surprised as it reacted immediately. From its shoulders, two small cannons popped up and began to fire blue orbs at the new aerial combatants. The cannons seemed to have a mind of their own as they pivoted and rotated to aim without any aide. Each of the blue orbs that was shot out tore through the aerial shadow creatures like they were paper, continuing on through the creatures behind it as well until it hit the shadow barrier and was stopped.
This all happened while the android continued to cut down the shadows that were trying to overwhelm him with numbers. However, after moving towards the center of room, that allowed for him to avoid getting overwhelmed as every creature that came out had to move the same distance to get to him.
This caused Altair to click her tongue in irritation. She then immediately added archers to the creation, armed them with longbows, and gave them dragon bone arrows as well that would spawn behind them for use. She also increased the spawn rate of all ground-based shadow creatures at the same time to cover up for the lack of numbers that would come about due to the archers standing by and firing from the wall.
The flow of creatures changed as more of them began coming out from certain parts around the android. In the parts that suddenly stopped their waves, several large and man-shaped shadow creatures came out with bows that were taller than they were. They would then reach back into the wall and pull out an arrow that was just as tall as the bow and pull it back. Once they reached the peak of tension, they would release the arrows without a sound.
The android, once again, was completely unsurprised or shocked and reacted immediately. It brought its arms together abruptly and a blue field pulsed out, knocking back everything in the room with a massive shockwave. It even knocked Altair off her feet, however it didn't seem to do any damage. It was more like she was just shoved to the ground instead.
However, that shockwave had knocked all of the arrows off their course and flung them in random directions. Some of the arrows wound up piercing her own shadow creatures, causing them to fade back into the ground along with the arrow.
As Altair climbed back to her feet, the shadows creatures that were knocked back quickly got back up and charged the android again with reckless abandon. They were completely unconcerned by the show of force that they just experienced and only continued to dive at the android with one purpose. The archers in the back got back up and knocked another arrow without a care, taking aim and firing once more.
As the arrows came close to the android and it was continuing to cut down the shadows, it once again smashed its arms together and another pulse knocked everything away once again.
Altair had yet to get back to her feet when she was pushed down onto her back. This caused her brows to furrow as she sat back up and continued to watch the fight before her.
'How can he be this skilled?' Altair was beginning to think that it wouldn't matter how many shadows she threw at this man, it wouldn't make a difference.
This man was better than she was. She knew this because she had done training in her Garden before. She had started the same way she started this fight, with an endless onslaught of melee creatures. She was able to fend them off, so she added aerial creatures to make it harder. She was still able to maintain herself in that situation, albeit it was a lot harder. Then she added the archers and she quickly got overwhelmed.
But this many before her didn't seem to care about what she added. In fact, Altair was thinking it was still holding back.
